


where there's smoke (floor 5)

by Anonymous



Series: floor 5 [2]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, SMPLive, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Gen, Inspired by Fanfiction, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:13:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22561558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "And without fame, a man must spend his lifeOnly to leave such traces upon earthAs smoke leaves in the air, or foam in the sea" - Dante-"It's...complicated. Of course I'll try to win," he can't, "it's an honour to be here," it's not, "but I know it's going to be her. It's always going to be her. I-I'm sorry, I don't-"Luckily, they take it as him being overcome by emotion and not the end of a shallow lie. How fucking delightful. He proffers an effete half-smile as the buzzer blares, catches a glimpse of himself on the viewfinder. Surely a child looks back at him, but a determined one. A strong child with bewitching dark eyes, well-muscled if lanky, towering easily over the presenter.Reality finally registers; his milquetoast stylist has crafted from the scraps of his decaying personality an underdog. Someone to root for and cry for and adore.He doesn't want this.Does he?-Congratulations to 'Wilbur Soot', Victor of the 58th Annual Hunger Games!
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), oh you want to ship irl people? get fuuuuuucked
Series: floor 5 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1732753
Comments: 105
Kudos: 272
Collections: Anonymous, victors' tower canon works





	1. arsonist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WreakingHavok](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WreakingHavok/gifts).



> This is an alternate version of your traditional Hunger Games AU. It focuses on the bonds between various creators and how they deal with the unfamiliar lifestyle Victors lead in this universe. There will be no graphic violence done to or between friends, and there will be no death. If I ever write something you feel is over the line, please let me know so I can fix it.
> 
> As a general disclaimer, I am only affiliated with this one work, ‘where there's smoke (floor 5)’. The related works were inspired by this universe, but are written by independent authors, whom I have no control over.

At the end of the day, it's not about him. It's about Charlie, shivering accentuated in silhouette above the bay. He isn't dressed for the weather up on the rocks, because nobody is. The Reaping of District 4 never takes long, after all, and until his best friend's name is called the only thing on Will's mind is the evening's fish stew and the dawn shift he has tomorrow. Panem's formation is a story he's heard before too many times (a thin veneer of placating splashed over the great unspoken war) to even bother listening to. In a District where to be Reaped means only temporary inconvenience and a story, there's nothing to worry about. The paltry Careers programme takes enough of the precious little money around to keep everyone else safe.

And then the escort says his name. Not _his_ name, but it may as well be for how long they've spent together as brothers in all but blood. 

So briefly, naturally, all logic slides away. The lucid horror of Charlie's being chosen, the stiff and robotic march he takes to the faroff stage, his hitching breath amplified by the microphone - all of it presses against Will's ribcage in a roaring riptide of fear. He can't. He can't go. 

But of course he won't have to. That's not how this works. Any moment now, this year's Career will volunteer. She's a stocky young woman and a favourite of the racketeers. Although she has never been kinder than haughty to Will, he respects her sacrifice like everyone else. In the town's mind, she already stands proudly beside the grateful waif of a teen she's replaced. This year, it just happens to be Charlie.

And nothing happens. 

_What?_

And nobody volunteers.

_Where is she?_

And finally, with dawning panic, he realises that the Career isn't here. The crowd and distance make the Justice Building's stage hard to inspect, but in a rapid corruption of roles the Mayor appears to be dithering whilst the escort is oddly still. A Peacekeeper motions harshly for the tributes to step away from the glass ball of unchosen names. Ever deferent, Charlie turns obligingly towards the Justice Building, away from the sea, away from Will and away from all of them and-

Away from the strangled sound that tears itself out of his throat. It is inhuman, it is broken, it is a clear-cut crystal agony that spears him cleanly through. It is echoed six times over throughout the crowd of District 4. 

"I volunteer!" he screeches on the third try, blundering up over the spray-soaked rocks with heedless abandon. Calloused hands bear the brunt of the improvised stairway, but he must leave at least the skin of his knees scraped across the boulders. In a different and equal way, he leaves his heart strewn over them too. "I volunteer, please, please, I volunteer as tribute!" 

The last time he was this scared was a long, long time ago. Even then they were always together in their mischief. All eight of them had been sprawled out on the beach, nominally gathering handfuls of mussels for dinner. In reality, they were children. 

He was halfway buried in the golden sand, singing with Rhianna again. The effect was hardly prodigious, but their simple melodies were pleasant to the ear and fun to perfect. The distant twin figures of Jack and George had been chasing each other up and down the sandbar for hours. Like everyone else, they spent their mornings reveling in the limitless energy of a bountiful summer. 

Matt, ever the contemplative type, he remembers was presiding over David and Dan's latest argument in serious tones. And then there was Charlie. Alone by the sea, toddling through the pebbles and noticing something strange in the water. 

Jellyfish blooms are quick and nasty buggers.

Those days were the worst of his life. Venom-wracked and sun-sick, Charlie's slow recovery broke them all in little ways. Rhianna wouldn't sing with him anymore. Matt's sarcasm bit more savagely, more often. George took home so many shellfish the first week that every kid on their street treated him roughly for months in memory of the chowder. If it took them all so long to recover without his grounding presence and uncomplicated enthusiasm as children, then...well, Will's decision was made the moment those manicured fingers touched paper.

They will mourn without him, but they will wither without Charlie. 

The spray of the sea is aggressive today, spitting its invasive saline solution in his mouth and in his eyes. It's almost a good thing - if he doesn't know whether or not he's crying then the cameras certainly won't. Seven sobbing teenagers sprint after him, but all know the rules and one by one all are held back. He doesn't want to remember much of what happens after that, so he retreats into the embrace of a secluded daze.

About three steps into the train station, a little-used and well-rusted affair, some huge presence clutches the front of his coat and holds him up to the brick wall. Spit and surprise flood his mouth.

"Do you have _any_ idea what you've done?" she yells, too close to his face, his best and only starched collar bunched irreparably under her hands. The Career. "Years of planning go into this, you fucking moron! I was waiting!" 

His feet aren't even touching the ground. The escort whimpers feverishly in the doorway like a kicked dog, and he hates him all the more for it. Then what she says ticks over in Will's brain, and to her eternal credit she doesn't mock his expression. 

"There is no honour in a volunteer's failure, Gold," she spits after a second, nodding complacently to the Peacekeepers stomping onto the platform. Before they can reluctantly restrain her, she drops him with a rough snort. The fear in her eyes is not for him. "You're going to lose for _nothing_ and for _nobody._ I hope you're proud of yourself." When she leaves, it is in the stalking manner of a predator who knows they will outlive their prey.

She's halfway there, Will reflects as the green-haired little escort fusses disproportionately over his crinkled shirt. He won't lose for District 4, for the Capitol, for rich merchants and their vainglorious bloodsports. He'll lose for his friends, and maybe that'll be enough.

The first day passes in a whirl of business, the reinvention of his body a priority. Every defining mark of effort and injury is stripped and sanded back; with the loss of his calluses comes the inane urge to weep. Years of labour melt away, and he is as soft and useless as a child born here. It's not like his mentor wants to touch him, especially after the fateful visit of...well. Her. Instead he spends most of the night plumbing the depths of Twitch. But never the Games. Never the Victors' channels.

Life can't stay like that forever, though. The head trainer is a freckled teenager called Dave, ropy but slight, who speaks with a kind of eloquent gravitas. Even the real Careers are openly afraid of him, so Will assumes he's some dangerously famed Capitol personality. Whilst taking out his frustrations on a dummy with one of the peculiarly balanced tridents, they lock eyes. He's symmetrical and tired-looking with a ludicrous cowlick and piercing gaze. Will has bigger problems than a dick-measuring contest with some posh twat, though, so he looks away and stabs the weapon through an eye with better form than normal. Dave moves on and the room lets out a laughably bated breath.

Will's own room is cavernously large and utterly wasteful at every turn. When he realises the shower water is warm and unsalted, an egregious squandering of energy, he almost stops using it altogether. Electricity follows him everywhere he walks. Its low buzz is a sorry substitute for the scent of paraffin, the ocean's comforting din. Mute servants recommend him a vast array of fish, an edible echo of home, but all of it is overprepared and gentrified to the point of diversion. Homesickness creeps relentlessly towards him. The other tributes avoid each other relentlessly except for meals, and after a while begin to take dinner in their rooms. He's glad - being around the others is intense in all the wrong ways.

His interview comes around, as it inevitably must. The model of a District 1 tribute from years before is predictably stunning, the image of power and strength in a silver sheath dress. His stylist, a mild-mannered woman with crimped eyelashes called Olivia, doesn't think a similar ensemble will work for him. She's right.

Instead, they play up his softness, his stature, his melodic District 4 accent and mellow seaside charm. It's done so well that the boy in the dressing room mirror doesn't look like him at all. The sweater is an inoffensive yellow, his makeup so focused around the eyes as to make them seem twice the size. Exasperated, the stylist presses an unfamilar kind of hat onto his untameable hair and tells him in no uncertain terms that it will have to do. The fabric is warmer and softer than anything he's ever worn.

Outside that sanctum of soft-spoken adjustment, the bustle of the crew is insurmountable. It reminds him of dawn on the docks before a long trip, but instead of the week's fish these people are tasked with harvesting his soul in equally digestible soundbites. None of them take any notice of him. Overwhelmed and lost, he dips back into the first dressing room that might be his.

It very much is not. Spools of pink ribbon are draped over crates of clothes, bouquets of salmon blossoms heaped around the backlit mirror. A robed figure stands alone by the window and watches the rampant festivities play out below. Will hadn't recognised him before, but if the ridiculous outfit isn't enough then the hair certainly is.

"Are you Technoblade?"

The boy whips around guiltily. Huh. As it turns out he looks much, much younger in character, which seems antithetical to the purpose. Shorter than Will by quite a stretch, he commands attention nonetheless. Instead of appearing regal and threatening the furred mantle and bejeweled crown hang limply over his bony frame. It's almost academic. There's something halfway pitiable about it all, until you remember that the glittering diadem has its purpose. 

"Well," he says, recovering quickly, "that rather depends on who's asking." Despite the harshness of the words, there's no real enmity behind them. Technoblade - Dave - smiles too readily for a Career, and the farcical pink fringe flopping into his eyes only consolidates the beguiling demeanour. "Oop, sorry. I don't think they used enough hairspray at the sides there," he laughs softly, like it's the funniest thing in the world. "Do they need me on set already?" 

"No, no, I...I'm a tribute." Will is mortified. Dave's smile disappears.

"Oh. Oh, I'm so sorry." It's the only time anyone's apologised. Thus far, the tone has been set by the celebratory insouciance of his chattering escort. Summarily that he's _lucky_ to be here, lucky to lose, lucky to perhaps be a footnote in the grimmest of histories. Personally he can't see the appeal.

"It's okay-"

"It's not." 

Surely no victor could be that naive. Even some tradition-soiling fisherboy like Will knows no expense is spared on surveillance for the Games. They're not alone anywhere. Especially not here. Just in case, he scratches at his ear covertly and blinks. Dave rolls his eyes so hard that the pink eyeshadow all but peels off. His freckles are makeup too, Will notices suddenly - nothing about this outfit is less than engineered. The thought is a sobering one. 

"Don't bother, man. What are they gonna do to me that they haven't done already?" A nihilistic chill laces the words. Even though he's clearly older, Will feels inexplicably childish next to this overdressed infant. This overdressed infant whose nails are longer than his hands and filed into claws, painted a slick and gloomy red. For perhaps the first time ever, he sees what a cruel trick the post-game personas really are. "You know, I was going to be a writer. I was, I was good, and I was _trying._ I had a good, respectable trade. What did you say your name was, again?"

"Um, I didn't. William Gold. Will is fine." This is insane. He needs to leave, now, before they're both caught and strung up as an example to the rest.

"Then my sincere apologies, _William,_ " Dave says. "Wouldn't want to scare you." Something less than appreciative tilts its head pleasantly in clear dismissal, leans against the dressing table like he isn't even there. "Good luck." 

"Dave, I..." He trails off, forlorn. Nothing he could say would come off as better than condescending and pitiful. Dave stiffens slightly, and Will has overstepped. Costuming aside, the arch of his neck finally displays some of that monarchical mien he always has in the interviews. Almost without meaning to, he takes a step back. It doesn't escape notice. 

"I don't really go by Dave anymore," he says, drawing the thick cloak around his shoulders. "You know what they say," and he's crying. Will's worst nightmare is bracing himself against the mirror, trying to angle himself to sob in such a way that his eyeliner stays sharp, and he's fucking crying.

"Technoblade never dies." 

Almost exactly two years later, Panem's beloved arsonist will be trussed up like a turkey in a charcoal grey suit. There's irony in there somewhere. His interview getup will be a truly abominable creation, wreathed in fake smoke that billows in flattering puffs whenever he moves, but at least it'll be on brand. 

Evidently they will be determined to drag him from isolation like this every year, the prize beast prodded and poked to wax charismatic on the virtues of the new tributes. Pure sadism. Grumbling habitually, he will stumble into Floor 5's most interesting bedroom without knocking and summon the energy for a friendly smile. 

Technoblade never, ever dies. And when Wilbur Soot sees the carnage, he will be inclined to agree.


	2. vignette

"Who were you going to be?"

"Beg pardon?" Will turns and looks at the District 2 tribute in alert disbelief. It's the first time anyone has bothered to strike up a conversation since he'd been found in the wrong dressing room and escorted firmly back to his seat. Food and makeup litter the floor around the waiting tributes, filling time in various states of distress, but he's got more important things to think about. What they want from him, after hours of conjecture and prodding, is unabashed likability.

Sullen silence won't work for him, and neither will the self-confidence the real Careers have been touting on the screens. He's not the type. Friendliness, awe of this place, endearing idiosyncrasies that might make him stick in the minds of the richest sponsors - they're his best bet in this dangerous charade.

In essence, they want a similar persona to Technoblade's. Yet the fatigued, multi-faceted presence that observed him through that fringe won't leave his mind. Perhaps his own inevitable failure is a mercy, if his payoff is never becoming so exhausted as that boy.

"I want to know," she says straightforwardly, scrunching up her nose with the full-bodied cheek of a woman raised for war and little else. Regular social niceties aren't blunt enough to bludgeon him with, apparently. "I want to remember you."

He scoffs semi-ironically and points his spoon at her. Even the cutlery here is ornate and wasteful, real stainless metal inlaid with sparkling red jewels.

"Don't patronise me."

"No, I'm serious," and her voice softens in a way that rankles him more than anything else. "You're only sixteen. And you were brave, in the video. That's worth something." Maybe she really believes that. Maybe she even thinks it a compliment. Biting back an astringent retort, Will sighs. It's not as if anyone else wants to talk. What harm could it possibly do?

"I was going to be a fisherman, like everyone else," he starts, droning, but pauses at her expression.

"Ah di'n' say _wha',"_ she points out through a mouthful of something unidentifiable and beige, "Ah sai' _who."_ She hasn't stopped eating all day. Probably a wise example to follow.

"I...I'm not sure," he says, dropping the spoon and finding the statement to be lamentably true. He looks up. The screens overhead show the District 1 boy, an angry beast of a man made talkative by bravado. "I wanted to be a singer or a musician, if I could afford it. A husband, probably. A father, I suppose."

What would he have done earlier, if he knew? Asked out a girl. Bought that too-expensive guitar. Gotten so good at it that he never had to fish again. Or perhaps he would have locked himself away, ignored them all always. That way, it wouldn't hurt as much when he was gone.

"You s'pose?" She mimics his dialect roughly and he smiles despite himself. "Lofty aspirations." They share a chuckle, and that brings him back into the thick of it all. Of course, any camaraderie they drum up now will only be a handicap in the arena. She must feel genuinely sorry for him to do this, and that...that irks him.

"You don't know what it's like," he ventures rigidly, worrying the expensive spongy threads of his jumper. They're too soft and the pattern is all wrong - the same all the way down, with no identifying stitch. It even smells metallic. "To have nothing to lose." 

She bats his hand away from the turtleneck like a fussing mother, tutting almost on instinct, and he freezes. It borders on droll; her expression tightens a modicum as he recoils, and then further as she takes in what he said.

"Oh, Gold, no." Though light, her tone is flatly cheerless and her grin teeters between cruel and sad. Will, who refuses to even learn her name, understands suddenly why she was chosen for this. "Quite the contrary.

No, I don't think you don't know what it's like to have _something_ to lose."

A buzzer sounds. It's her time. She stands, pasting on a winning smile, and - despite the nine other tributes eyeballing him in the wake of his borderline suicidal comment - he has never been more alone. Horridly, abruptly, he no longer cares for the judgment of strangers. By this time tomorrow a solid third or more of these people will be little more than words on a page. And he will likely be among them.

Nobody else says a word. The stream catches Will's attention as it does theirs.

"The gorgeous girl herself, everybody!" Glowing under the cameras, she is strength incarnate. A part of him is perversely jealous, but he quashes it down and tries not to feel anything. If he's going to get through his own interview? He can't afford to. 

Things start well enough. "May I just say what an honour it is to sit down with you this evening," starts the presenter. His hair is a deep brown and coiffed, his makeup a lustrous sunny yellow. If she's repulsed, the tribute doesn't show it. "A little birdie told me that your score, an absolutely fantastic _eleven_ -"

The crowd roars, and she clearly loves it. He feels sick. "Well, obviously everyone is postively enamoured." Obviously.

The two of them make pleasant small talk for a time. Rajj Patel has been good at his job for a very long time, after all. Will plans out his own answers and fusses over his own lipstick, anything to distract from the livestream, but it's mesmerising. 

"My dear girl. Tell me. What do you think is your greatest asset going into this year's Games?" A stock question, but a leading one. Her eyes light up and he wonders why he had bothered to attempt sparring with her at all.

"I...care," she says carefully, and the presenter's head cocks like a trained hound on a scent. For a moment, Wilbur could swear there are tears in Rajj's gold-rimmed eyes. He blinks and they're gone. "I care about the Games, about the ceremony. I care enough to give them the respect they deserve. And most of all," the girl discloses, directly into the main camera, "I care about my friends. One of them, I only befriended him recently, he's honestly a sweetheart. Loves to sing and such."

She's ridiculous and simping and thoroughly transparent. Why are they all so damned gormless? "Needless to say, I'm just a tad worried."

"Well, I don't think you have anything to worry about!" the presenter sing-songs, his grin again fixed in place, to approving hubbub. Poor old duxe. He'll be replaced by the turn of the decade, Wilbur's sure of it.

"Not for me, silly." She smiles to soften the insult, sleek and acerbic. "I'm just going to miss Will when I win." 

And that's time. The auditorium is silent. She yawns, winks at the camera and strides offstage to somewhere he doesn't know.

Which is just as honestly just as well. For all her muscle, he could strangle her. She can't possibly think this is doing him a favour. All the way through the District 3 tribute's interview, a pinched and sallow slip with little to offer but humour, he seethes.

But then there's no more time to reflect. Because he's being ushered out into the brightness, and as soon as he deserts the relative safety of the soundproofed waiting room it is so very, extremely loud. Ecstatic screaming streams down around him in an interminable waterfall of sound, a mammoth and heaving mass of humanity on a scale he has never even witnessed. Four's population could fit inside this stadium thrice and do it comfortably, merchants and all. 

Cameras and screens flit around like shimmering insects. Vaguely, he recognises that they are broadcasting his face across Panem on the national Twitch channel. Every single person, from every District, can see him. Not to look is harder than he'd thought and so after a moment he does.

Oh no. Emerging from the curtains in his premeditated domestic getup, six and a half feet of pure veneration in the makeup of a boy, he looks nothing short of ethereal. And nothing like himself. They're not even halfway through the interviews, but Rajj seems thoroughly glad to have latched onto something interesting. At least he lets him drum up a self-abasing patter before springing a trap. This moment is so important that he wills himself to forget about the girl. Dealing with the fallout of her twisted mind games can surely wait until dinner.

So he rambles genially about his childhood, about the Soots, and tells a funny exaggerated story of how they got their name. Charming as ever, the presenter comments that they match in their fashionable yellows and he forces a chuckle of agreement. Now they're sitting a foot apart, he notices the spasmodic tapping of his foot against the woodwork. It must have been a long time since he won his Games, though; what does a Victor have to be worried about?

"I just want to win for them," he confides earnestly, despising himself for telling these vultures his truth in such pretty packaging, and - just as his mentor had promised - they melt. It's like a festival at home, the teeming silence before a singer's last note. The crowd is putty in his hands. They hang on rapturously, curiously, to every word.

That's about when it hits.

"And what about your new friend?" asks his interviewer out of nowhere, sombre pout underpinned with some deeper dissatisfaction. "I don't think you can win for her." He swallows his pride and summons a sorrowful expression. It's not exactly a difficult task.

"Of course not. She's my sweetest friend in all the world," he lies, voice cracking. They'll understand. They'll know, when they're sending the shattered shell of him out to sea for the final time, that this is what he had to do. "It's...complicated. Of course I'll try to win," he _can't,_ "it's an honour to be here," it's _not,_ "but I know it's going to be her. It's always going to be her. I-I'm sorry, I don't-"

Luckily, they take it as him being overcome by emotion and not the end of a shallow lie. How fucking delightful. He proffers an effete half-smile as the buzzer blares, catches a glimpse of himself on the viewfinder. Surely a child looks back at him, but a determined one. A strong child with bewitching dark eyes, well-muscled if lanky, towering easily over the presenter. Reality finally registers; his milquetoast stylist has crafted from the scraps of his decaying personality an underdog. Someone to root for and cry for and adore.

He doesn't want this.

Does he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know i said it was a oneshot but i was Thinking  
> luckily this scene only covers about ten minutes with no named not-dead characters so i shouldn't be interfering with havok's timeline too much


	3. homecoming

We don't need to discuss what happens during them to know William Gold disappears the moment the Games begin. But the boy who leaves the arena? They call that shiny new character Wilbur Soot, and grasping how best to be him is a steep learning curve.

At first, he clutches to his chest some minuscule hope that the Capitol can do it for him. It certainly seems that way. Throughout the Victory Tour, his escort produces a seemingly endless supply of cue cards to read from. They drip with empty pleasantries, tasteless schmaltz. Naturally, he begins to embellish them with some rather more personal comments. Or, as a very wise woman once said, "You can do whatever the fuck you want, so long as it's interesting." For better or for worse, he takes her words to heart and gives it his all.

Admittedly there are a few hiccups. Leaning into Wilbur Soot, the captivating daredevil with a penchant for mischievous turns of phrase, isn't always enough to dull the pain of orating to the Districts. It doesn't help that his Games footage is displayed and celebrated at every opportunity. He reads the cards and tries not to look at the District 2 girl's friends and family. Her tribe, her Soots. They are all tall and muscled and well-fed. They alone do not congratulate his success in the District of strength.

The families of District 6 are especially downtrodden - their pain throws his own into sharp relief, and when he apologises it apparently causes a PR shitstorm on about a thousand different levels. The people there are quietly but obviously disgusted by him, smiling prettily above their squalor. At the time, it feels like the right thing to do.

He drops the act completely in District 7 and nearly breaks down on stage. Never again. It's the only time in his life that he does something properly and usefully selfless, and all it inspires is mourning. They reshoot in front of a greenscreen that night. He reads the stupid fucking cards with a smile on his face.

Luckily, he has no connection to the children of District 8. He flirts with the mayor and stays on-script and from then on, everything falls into its proper place.

"Isn't it all just so much less complicated now?" witters his escort at one point. He's short and hyperactive with a bouncy green quiff, like an irritating mallard. Wilbur, who has just looked into the eyes of a District 10 toddler and lightly glossed over her grieving confusion, fucking despises him. "It's truly so marvellous to see you growing up so fast. We'll make a socialite of you yet." The man pats his cheek, condescending, and he stiffens under the touch. That's not how to use that gesture at all. Clearly these people have no idea how important body language is, with their extensions and perversions of the self at every turn. If only in that second, he feels the urge to bite the gorgeously manicured hand just to prove it wrong.

Home, at last. Home is breathtakingly beautiful to see. Pulling out of the station with a wrinkled collar, wheezing for breath, he had watched the expanse of the sea fall away and made his peace with never seeing it again. It crashes against the rocks, as powerful and uncaring as ever, and Wilbur is reminded of a power even the Capitol can't domineer.

Too many thoughts like that have been surfacing recently. Dangerous inklings of statecraft beyond his comprehension, unsettling and disquieting ideas of using his newfound influence to...no, no, he can't even think the words. What has all of this proven, if not his cowardice?

Of course, their final destination of District 4 permits him as a hero. The original transgression of his volunteering has been abandoned, eclipsed by improbable victory. Ungenerously, he can't bring himself to care as much as she should. Finally, for one day - one measly day - he is free. No prizes for guessing where he goes first as the sun reaches its peak.

The other Soots are gathered to eat under the pier as ever, but it's not the same. In a few short days, the Games made him not just a Victor but a pariah. In the week or so since they've dismantled and reconstructed him, into someone new and obdurate who can bear the gaze of the public eye. The eight of them have lived through too much together to abandon him outright. Still, he's gone somewhere they can't follow and then come home, seemingly without scars.

They've changed too, he realises. Everyone is sadder, quieter, with grey faces and dirty clothes. This isn't what he had imagined at all. He had managed to forget that the corrupting influence of the Games will always run further and deeper than anything else.

After half an hour or so of awkward small talk, he spares them the trouble of pretence and sets his bowl harshly on the pebbles. It tastes awful now anyway, after the food he's been eating. Every single person flinches away from the sound, and that's the final straw.

"I'm sorry," Matt says mollifyingly, but there's a concerned edge to it that isn't towards Wilbur. He always has been the best at reading him. He stands up and Matt shoots to his feet defensively. Jack does too, shaking. It's ridiculous and unfair and he can't do anything about it.

"And I'm still me," he sighs, exasperated, carding a hand through his hair to dispel the effects of hairspray. "I'm still the same Wilbur you always knew." Not true, but it's what they need to hear.

Maybe it's his appearance. After thoroughly ruffling his fringe back to normality, he scrubs the makeup from his face and unbuttons the expensive jacket that weighs too heavy on his arms. David and Dan lock eyes as he does so, and the fact he can't tell what they're communicating is harrowing.

"Wilbur?" breathes George finally, and his eyes are wet for perhaps the first time in a good dozen years of friendship. "Your name is Will, you fucking moron. William Gold."

Fuck. He's messed up, bad.

"No, no, he's right!" Rhianna ripostes out of nowhere fiercely, frantically, and it hurts. "William Gold's gone and been gone." She stands, spits into the sand. "Come on, guys. I don't really feel like humouring this nutcase anymore. I'm going home, and I'm going to mourn my _friend."_

It's peremptory and scathing, but he has nothing to say. She's right. Challenging, almost pleading, she waits anyway. The only sounds are the crackling roar of the ocean and her furiously laboured breathing. He inevitably breaks eye contact and she flounces out of view. One by one they follow, until it's just him and Charlie. He dithers, just for a painful second, and then sprints over like nothing has changed.

District 4 folk don't really do hugs. When the loudest thing, everywhere, at all times, is the sea, words are a cheaper currency than touch. Charlie rests his forehead lightly against Wilbur's shoulder and it's a rare and old gesture, a wordless expression of platonic appreciation. It's not enough, but it's something.

"I don't think you should have come back," he whispers into Wilbur's neck, and he nods. This was a mistake. All his friends can see is the smoke in his eyes, the rocks in the water, and can he blame them? The world cracks a little further as Charlie backs away. He licks his salt-cracked lips, parts them like he wants to say something more, and then shrugs. It's a helpless movement. "Thank you for volunteering," he says, hoarse. "I'll never forget it." Then he's gone.

If Wilbur turns around he knows he'll get to watch him a little while longer, sprinting over the fine granules to gain what little momentum he can, leaping for the seawall and grabbing at the split crack that always scrapes his little finger, clambering over...

Disappearing from his life forever.

So he doesn't turn around. A stupid, hateful, petty part of him wants it all to end on his own terms. If his ultimate reward for stepping forward, for trying, for _winning,_ is this? Then that awful side of him almost wishes he had never volunteered at all.

It's a good thing the Victory Tour is over. Without it he would never know how to school his face into that of his parents' beloved son. Already emotionally spent, he tries to talk to them over dinner and finds the same impassable distance. Neither of them are exactly staunch patriots, for all their adherence to the rules.

No, the Golds have always been a quiet people. He was an idiot to think they'd be proud, any more than tolerant of what he's done for their family and District. In return for his sacrifice they'll never go hungry again. Yet they share meaningful looks every few minutes throughout their meal, and he gets the impression that their requests to see him will be few and far between.

Unjustifiably angry, he finds his way to the boys' dormitory after more of that abominable stew. How did he ever enjoy it? No parent is out on the sea, not today, so every bunk is barren and deserted. Apart from his own. Clothes, toys, all untouched under a thin layer of dust. His valuable leather boots, left alone. So that's how it is. He stuffs the few important things into a duffel bag and scrawls obscenities into the grime.

Word must have spread of his reappearance. Even the younger ones don't show him their seaweed necklaces or offer him a handful of precious sugar from his own fucking winnings. Only adults look at him with unsettled smiles, with pale gratitude. _But I gave this to you_ , Wilbur wants to scream as they tiptoe around him in the streets and ogle at his clothes like an escort. _This is all because of me._

Meeting Pyrocynical is an exercise in sentiment. It's been almost a decade since his time in the limelight, after all, and the Victor was already Wilbur's age when he stole the attention of the nation and never quite got around to returning it. The patchy vision of a solid brunet teenager in Wilbur's mind melts and runs into someone closer to thirty than thirteen. He steps out of the lift, a terrifying contrivance of glass and metal, and idly wonders if he'll make it that far.

It's odd. For some reason, he'd expected a measure of formality, a distressing swearing-in. Apparently that's all for show. One of the most important people in Panem's history, the whip-smart young Victor over whom thousands of Capitol citizens fawn, is standing in the entrance hall in his pyjamas. He has ridiculous silver-blond bedhead, and he looks nothing like the full-faced boy that won the 50th Hunger Games.

"You must be Wilbur Soot," Pyrocynical crows sharply, but he says it like a title, like something to be proud of. He understands immediately why this exact persona hasn't already faded into relative obscurity. "I'm Niall Comas, but Pyro is probably better. What District are you from?"

Wilbur blinks. Maybe he's simple, or just tired. Everyone knows Comas' name, if only for the performance preceding its infamy and commencing the decade. Everyone similarly knows his own District, for all the good it does him.

Niall rolls his eyes good-humouredly and holds up a familiar golden rectangle, making a show of not having to read the tiny printed text. Of course. "Welcome to Floor 5, your home away from home." He grimaces, lobs the offending card over one shoulder and motions Wilbur to follow him through a nondescript door. "Alright, fuckin' finally. That's the script over and done with. Obviously _she_ seems to have taken a shine to you, so that's a bloody great head start. Usually it's a total nightmare. When you get to meet the others..."

The others. He can barely bring himself to listen to Niall's effortless patter. It's all sinking in, now, where he is. What he's gone through to be here, oh fuck. These people are members of a class he has always judged as seperate and impenetrable. Others, indeed. Now he's one of them, and finds no comfort in the reputation.

Suddenly, he finds it hard to feel anything but animosity towards the welcoming if mordant man slouching on each step just ahead of him. A Victor like Niall could never understand. To the Capitol his lucky triumph was at best immortalising, and at worst too quick to savour. In Wilbur's eyes, it sets the two of them irrevocably apart.

"...and I like to think we're a bit of a family, or something." Yeah. Or something. "If you need to cry or shout or throw things or whatever the fuck, it's okay. Like, we've all been through it." The more he talks, the more Wilbur yearns to punch him in the face. The Games have taken from him his District, his family, his friends and his innocence. This man is basically Capitol born and bred, and it offends him more with every soft footfall on the polished marble.

"Do you even remember it?" he says when he can get a word in edgewise, and he doesn't quite know why he does. Maybe to provoke a reaction. He certainly gets that. Coming to a standstill mid-step, Niall turns in place to stare at him. Shock and barely-contained rage saturate his amicable smile.

"Wow. Let's not say shit we can't take back, yeah?" It's said desperately, a threat so thinly veiled as to be self-evident, before he starts walking again. Between one step and the next, the façade is back in place. Which is, he realises, his goal in antagonising Niall. To establish that he isn't like the rest of the Victors. To show that they're not the inevitable product of the Games. They're here to squander a life of luxury and forget everything but celebrity. He's here for penance. Breaking down like a child is no longer an option.

For obvious reasons, the lack of windows in the hallway is making him uncomfortable. Can he really taste smoke in the air, or is he just imagining it? He consoles himself with a reminder that it must cut through the middle of the tower. They'll find a window in the next room.

Ah, but if it doesn't become so much harder to breathe when the trend holds true, when Niall silently shoulders open an arched door and the common area beyond is completely enclosed. The ceiling isn't vaulted but rather curved, and there's only one exit. Nothing to hide behind. Nowhere to run. No way to escape. Something about it unsettles him. Perhaps it's that it bears an uncanny resemblance to a lobster pot. Perhaps it's that he's alone with Pyrocynical.

It looks unexpectedly lived-in, the ornamental furniture strewn with electronics he doesn't understand and food he doesn't recognise. A Twitch hoodie dangles haphazardly from the corner of a television. Even just the logo gives him the shivers. Without ceremony, Niall gives him directions to his own room in a monotone and all but collapses onto one of the sofas. Wilbur knows when he's not wanted.

"We're more similar than you think," he hears, and pauses with one hand on the doorknob. Should he just leave? "Fire, soot, it's all the same shit. It's in your name just like it's in mine. 'S all they care about here, y'know." The rustling of fabric. "Names and faces, prettyboy."

Wilbur is far too young to remember much about Pyrocynical, of all people. All he knows, is that now, in the present and in the Capitol, he has a tongue twice as silver as his hair. Fingers in every pie. Relevance oddly secured. Ambitious to a fault past the flash fame of the Games. The guy's apparently slated to be the next presenter, a position of such influence that Minx would surely drool. It's not the kind of future he can possibly imagine himself yearning for. Closing the door behind him with not even the smallest click or creak, Wilbur decides to take his words seriously - to never to think of Niall Comas as anything but Pyro ever again.

Every room he passes through is incurably silent.

Dependably bad as they always are, his bedroom is filthy with indulgence. In defiance of his stylist's timid succour during his worst breakdowns, she's decided that yellow is _his colour,_ whatever the hell that means. Right now, it means that the carpet and the bedclothes and even his bloody door are a painfully intense mustard.

The bed is too large, too soft, even worse than in the Training Centre. As he had done then, he knots a throw between the bedposts into a makeshift hammock. It's not a home, but it's what he's been given. His pillow is his bag, unopened. Not once has he ever felt so alone. Not even the day he won.

Even after the trial of yellow, the bathroom is enough to stop him in his tracks. Stencilled around the walls is a florid nautical print. It's somewhere between a cruel jab and a senseless design decision. There's no way to tell and there's no way to destroy it - everything and anything with some heft to it, anything he could feasibly swing or throw, is bolted down or sealed to the wall. No doubt that's the point.

Defeated, he scrubs at his too-soft hands and glares at one of the exquisitely detailed fish. One glassy eye stares blankly back, inky and bottomless. As he turns away it whirrs gently. His dream of being free from the cameras was just that, then. A fantasy. He'd better watch his mouth.

Which explains one thing. Pyro's question hadn't simply been a threat. It had been a warning.


	4. pantomime

Dimly, he's aware of a shadow above him. District 2. He doesn't know if it's for the cameras or out of a genuine misplaced affection, but she hesitates. He's trapped anyway. He's trapped alone in an indescribable darkness and he can't breathe and he's sobbing and-

And he wakes up. 

"Wilbur, you fuckin' dying in there?" someone bellows. There are no locks on the doors. This minor but critically important detail of Floor 5's architectural vision allows JustAMinx, scourge of Panem and the most unusual person Wilbur has ever had the pleasure of meeting, to bound into the room and nearly knock him out of his hammock.

Strictly speaking, he isn't supposed to have met her at all. Minx made the 55th Hunger Games the longest and perhaps most eminent on record, and she's explained to him the certain privileges this affords her. Everyone knows she shadows the Reapings like a fledgling hawk, picking out a favourite to harrass and advise. People in high places must find it amusing. More often than not, through some quirk of fate or otherwise, they're not exactly top picks for the rank of Victor.

So yeah, you could say Wilbur had been optimistic about his chances when she'd first wheedled her way into the Training Centre during the Pre-Games. It had been the strangest conversation of his life. Numbed by loneliness and the apprehension of their upcoming private training sessions, he'd foregone formalities and asked a question that had been in his head since he was twelve. He had asked JustAMinx exactly _how_ she got away with so much, and she had thrown back her head and howled with mirth.

"Ha! I can do whatever the fuck I want, so long as it's interesting." Her emblematic brogue hadn't diminished in her years of Capitol living. In fact, it had been almost more pronounced than before she won. "That's exactly what I like about you, you beanpole motherfucker. You're so damned interesting. Who asks shit like that? Who volunteers for a Career, for that matter? Brilliant. I want to, just, crawl inside your head and see what's going on in there." He hadn't doubted it.

Wilbur remembers feeling oddly consoled by her unabashed inquisitiveness. Even then she had always cut straight to the point, never one to bother with the unctuous machinations of Capitol politics. He had respected it then and he admires it now.

The door slams against the wall and Wilbur jumps. His head bounces painfully against one of the wooden bedposts. Minx bares her teeth sympathetically and he blanches; they've been contoured right down to needle-sharp points.

"Oh, you're a fan?" she asks innocently. "I tell you what, they're so fuckin' disgusting. It's worse every year. All I do is cut myself on the bloody things. Literally, look-"

Picking up one of his pillows, she bites down and displays the punctures with blazing fascination. Wilbur hums and directs her firmly to the door. She offers no protest, but no apology either. "Fair warning," she says when they're both in the hallway, suddenly serious. "It's about 4:30. At 6:00 they're going to be here for your welcome, and you're not gonna struggle. You're going to wear whatever the hell they put you in." She's looking right through him now, past him, and her eyes are so very blue. "It's gonna be terrible," she's hardly even talking to him anymore, "but you're not gonna struggle. Are you picking up what I'm putting down?"

He is, hazily. Children never really watch minor events like the welcome. His parents had never asked him to. Obviously he had always opted to spend the precious free time with the Soots instead. (The Soots. Fuck, he really can't think about them right now.) All he remembers of the celebration is garish costumes and boring talking, both of which made his mother cringe distressingly and his father promise not to spend so much money on Twitch.

No matter. By this point, he's aced so many interviews and suffered so many awfully plush outfits that he's pretty sure he can take whatever they throw at him. Not one singular fashion blunder he can think of could possibly be worse than the Games.

"Afterwards," her voice jolts him back to the present with a finality beyond her years, "you can meet the others properly. They're not that bad, I swear." And it's not like Minx to soften the truth, so he doesn't protest the point. 

_You can do whatever the fuck you want, so long as it's interesting._

He's wrong about the outfit.

On Minx's admittedly unsolicited advice, he sits still as a statue as the prep team coo and warble, keeping his eyes firmly closed except for them to administer some strange goop into them from a dropper that he barely trusts. It feels like it takes hours. Wilbur doesn't struggle, though, and eventually he falls into the fitful space between sleeping and waking.

An indeterminate amount of time later, the stylist taps him on the shoulder and into wakefulness proper. Visibly conflicted, she explains that this is not in fact her design, but a manufactured manifestation of his brand from the President's personal team. It's tradition for the first year, and it's always spectacular. She says the word 'spectacular' woodenly, like she too is reading from one of those sodding cue cards.

Disregarding that, it doesn't seem half bad. At first. Standing on wobbly legs with help from the prep team, he looks down and sees only an obscenely expensive-looking, tasteful heather-grey suit. His cufflinks are gorgeous, fragile silver and form his initials in a looping script. That is to say, Wilbur Soot's initials.

He decides at length that Minx is just a teenager, overreacting to the pomp and circumstance, if not to the admittedly overzealous fangs they like to give her every time an event like this comes around. For all her intelligence, she's still fifteen. Why treat her word as gospel?

"You brave, beautiful boy," the stylist says, delicately holding his wrist up to the light in order to trim his nails. Always so dramatic, these people. Behind her, the prep team let their gossip blunder and peter out. She moves closer to murmur her next words into his hair, and he'd feel threatened enough to react if not for the abundance of cameras he can pinpoint around the room. Perhaps she's less dopey than she looks, because what she says is, "I'm so sorry."

Such words are treason. More pertinently, they are the first indication that he has not merely donned a handsome suit and cufflinks. The second is that when the stylist explains the timings of the welcome ceremony to him, she can't hold his gaze for more than a few moments at a time.

Wilbur plots to confront what had intimidated her so in the polished doors of the lift, but when it arrives the prep team gasps as one.

Its doors are open, and likely to remain that way. Blades, or maybe claws, have gouged into the metal and left long furrows as deep as his wrist. Puckered, mangled metal lines each edge of the opening. Forcing optimism for the sake of the bleating makeup artist, he saunters in anyway and waves a jolly wave as he descends out of their view.

It feels like the advent of the Games in reverse. Then, he had resigned himself to losing as the plate had rose and missed the advice of his portly stylist almost immediately. Now he's the one left behind. Now she's the one afraid.

Voices banter comfortably in the common room. He hastens from a stiff march to a sprint as he passes the open door, and luckily nobody follows. Skidding into his awful maritime bathroom, he grabs the sink in both hands and tries not to disintegrate down the drain. The mirror can't lie or twist words. Only tell him a terrible truth.

They've forged from him a freak. Cruelly accentuated by shadowy makeup, his cheekbones protrude like snapped spokes from an ashen face. He would look sickly, if not for the shimmering silver glitter that catches the overhead light and makes him look...inhuman. Otherworldly. Something from after the end. Catching his own gaze in the mirror, he finally and properly comprehends.

Whatever it was they used has blown the pupils so wide open that they look less like his eyes than chips of polished black glass, reflections upon reflections of him glowering into infinity. Monstrous. Boundless. He's the fish on the frieze. Disgust threatens to overwhelm him. A few months of sumptous food and nice clothes and how easily he forgets his place, forgets how the Capitol operates. Someone tuts behind him, and he's not alone.

A very small woman is sitting on the edge of the bathtub and smiling at his reflection. By Capitol standards her black shirt is positively reserved. In fact, he would have thought her a Victor if not for her hair - half salmon pink, half cornflower blue in twin floaty waves that compliment her eye makeup. She must be a stylist. But, somehow, she isn't scared of him.

He grins almost honestly at that, watching the twinkle of his grossly perfect teeth in the mirror, and jokingly wonders out loud if his hands are going to be grey as well. Her laugh tinkles. Instead she gives him gloves, skintight silky things, embroidered with bones. Apt, then, that he feels just as skeletal as the costume. Despite his fish diet, in comparison to the others he is frankly gaunt. 

"Olivia says you forgot them," she says as he slips them on. The bones flex unnaturally with the slightest movement of his fingers, and he tries not to think too hard about it.

"Thank you, um..." Have they met?

"Angel," she supplies, not unkindly. The name rings a bell - she must be famous for her contributions to the pretty wrappings of the Games. It's a stark reminder that even the most shrewd and friendly of the Capitol citizens have no concept of the Districts' plight. "If you'll excuse me, it's my turn to get dolled up." A stylist with a stylist. It makes sense, but the thought amuses him whilst he watches her pad down the corridor as soundlessly as she had arrived. Showtime descends.

By and large it's a good thing, that they have him make a speech. Wilbur Soot doesn't hesitate, doesn't hyperventilate at the sight of himself running the gauntlet of the Games. Wilbur Soot doesn't choke on his platitudes when he sees himself limping through the smoke and remembers everything in definitive detail.

Where William would flounder and beg for forgiveness and most probably be gound guilty of high treason, Wilbur keeps himself afloat until the cameras turn away. He sinks into a chair in front of the scaffold. It's so very yielding that his own knees almost hit him in the face. 

Someone sucks in air through their teeth in understanding and he snaps out of it. It shouldn't take the effort it does to tear himself from the highlight reel. No longer the newest Victor but still clearly the youngest on the screens, TommyInnit shrinks into the seat next to him in a simple black suit and crimson tie. His hair is longer than during last year's Games, his knees similarly hug his chin and the smile on his face is carefully puerile.

Wilbur doesn't understand the outfit's significance to the kid's Games. Maybe it's harder than normal to brand a thirteen-year-old kid with no convenient puns to make about his methods in the Games. It falls from his mind until Pyro rises from his chair, the other Victors follow him to the stage and he sees on the viewfinder what they've done. Tommy is a snake.

The side Wilbur had been able to see is festooned with straightforward adolescence. Natural makeup gives prominence to his jawline and cheeks, red and cheerful and almost forcefully innocent. But with the perspective afforded by the new angle, he can see the other side. Sombre olive snakeskin crawls out from Tommy's hairline and down under his collar, the scales gleaming like emerald coins. The corresponding eye is the malignant amber of a reptile's and slitted accordingly. In tandem with his skittish stage presence and easy smile, the holistic effect is horrifying.

Technoblade stands to attention at his side. He's wearing the nails again, and a repulsive bright pink jumpsuit that puts Wilbur in mind of a Peacekeeper's uniform, of a baby-faced recruit plucked fresh from District Two. District One has left its mark on him though, in the jewels sewn along the seams. The combination of two lapdog Districts raises his hackles efficiently if nothing else.

Past Minx standing next to him (and fuck, he wants to find who did this to the Minx standing next to him), he doesn't recognise any of the other Victors except Pyro. As a younger child, he'd only ever picked up news of the Games through cultural osmosis and glimpses of his father's expensive habits. It's hard to connect those faces to names.

Statistically they're probably adults, but based on height he decides that they're three men and a girl. The guys wear calmly neutral expressions of varying fervor. On the other hand, he can only guess what the girl is thinking under an unsubtle sky blue gas mask. Despite the coarseness of it, he covets a similar barrier between himself and the hungry crowd.

Pyro waits a few moments for the din to subside. It doesn't, and for a very subtle second his blinding grin shrinks by a molar or two. He traipses past Tommy, langourous, like he has all the time in the world, and taps the microphone until it squeals. Everyone quiets abruptly and totally. Because of the feedback or authentic respect? Wilbur couldn't say. To look at him, neither could Pyro.

“Wilbur Soot," he exclaims, in the same synthetic upbeat tone as when they'd first met. He's wearing an absurdly overlarge purple coat and long black gloves like Wilbur's. Bones aren't stitched onto them, though; through some trick of technology the wall-wide projection of Panem's sigil can be seen right through them. It's as if his very arms were skeletal. He's also sporting, apparently, his signature red ears. They're shabby and mangy and certainly not stylist-approved. "As your fellow Victors, we congratulate you."

At that, Wilbur tries to communicate the sheer depth of disdain he feels for Pyrocynical without moving a muscle in his face. Based on the way Tommy begins to fidget, he succeeds. "Together, we are a part of something much bigger than ourselves, and you have the honour of joining us." The honour. The miserable fucking honour. As hard as he tries, he can't find even a morsel of sarcasm to betray the words. Funny that even in full dress-up as the amenable Wilbur Soot, he can't dispel that deep-down anger that's been budding for months now. For once, he's lost control. He's vibrating with it, practically overflowing with scorn, and the camera crew wisely fixates on the stage a moment longer.

Well aware of this fact, Pyro stares down at him with a latent kind of sadness. He rearranges his hair before slowly proclaiming, with a trace of something else that could be pride or plea, "We welcome you to our family, Wilbur."

That's it. Fuck it. He's going up there and confronting what used to be Niall Comas once and for all. It's not the twenty-six-year-old he hates, not really. It's the fifty years of oppression and trauma that he represents, and the- No. That's a lie too, and a selfish one at that. His heartbeat pounds in his ears like the ocean against the coast, crude and unrefined, and he thinks about the real reason, and he almost fucking does it. 

That's about when, pursing his lips, the next speaker strolls upstage. Wilbur glares at him. He's not proud of the way he bites down on his lip. But the Victor stares him down blankly, and punctuates it with the tiniest, smallest, blink-and-you'll miss it shake of his head.

"Wilbur," he mutters, and the expressionless monotone is jarring after Pyro's heartfelt - though likely completely fake - timbre. More unsettling is the fact that he's in a hoodie and jeans. He isn't even wearing any makeup. "Evidently you're well-adjusted. I think we'll get on well." His mouth perks up at the corners if only slightly, and the arena screams as if this is a rare event. It probably is.

Somehow, though, it works. Wilbur slumps in his seat. He feels suddenly drained. The song and dance of everything here is so _bloody_ tiring.

As if to illustrate his point, the tiny girl in the oversized gas mask replaces the stoic man and he takes stock. She's in a roseate slip that makes him more uncomfortable than anything else, and gossamer wings almost twice her height. When she speaks, it's distorted slightly through the filter but certainly the voice of an adult.

"Wilbur! Hi!" She waves. Reflexively he does too, and the rippling shift of the bones on his gloves inspires in him a shiver. "I think you seem lovely, and I can't wait to meet you." It takes her drifting away to the front row and the next Victor (a short man wrapped up like a parcel in some abominable mishmash of form-fitting blue suit and brightly coloured wires) to start walking up for him to realise that she and Angel are one and the same. 

The gas mask. The wings. Not just Angel, but The Angel. A chill runs down Wilbur's spine, because he's now on a very short list. People who have had a whole conversation with someone as private as 'toxxxicsupport'. Meanwhile, the decorated Victor dismounts the stage to thunderous applause. Wilbur has no idea what he said to get it, and doesn't really care. He just wants all of this to be over. Maybe to sleep. Yeah, sleep would be nice.

Younger than any of the others, maybe twenty-one, the next man is dressed in a faux-proud smile and a jet black power suit. Half the buttons are a blistering red, the rest cornflower blue, and when the camera focuses on his diamond cufflinks they bounce between the two.

"Wilbur. You did well, man! Good game." He turns to the sigil behind it in exaggerated shock as if he's never seen one before. Trying not to let his jaw drop too openly, Wilbur realises that he's wearing an actual cape. "Welcome to the sideshow."

"Vikk..." Tommy's shoulder stiffens against him as he mumbles his concern, but the quip is taken in good faith by the Capitol if not the menacing Peacekeepers that hover in the wings. They, much like his own people, convey much through body language. Slippery bastards. He doesn't remember how Vikkstar won his Games, but through watching the guards' silent conversation he thinks he might be something dangerous. Which brings the spotlight neatly to Minx.

If he is a freak, then she is a beast. The muted violet ombre of her hair has been replaced by a fiery red mane. Crimson liquid drips unending from it onto a ragged white dress, and he could swear that it sizzles and sparks when the two collide. Her already angular face is daubed with jagged layers of thick makeup, and holy fuck, have they given her _whiskers?_

"Wilbur!" She laughs, wildly and uninterrupted, for a good twenty seconds before carrying on. Nobody seems at all surprised or put out by this. "Wilbur Soot! You're a good sport. I am absolutely _so_ stoked," he struggles to maintain his mild-mannered expression even as she winks, "to show you the ropes around here." She bares her fangs at him and the audience whoops in mock fear. But she did it in the Training Centre, and she did it in the Victor's Tower. From her strange point of view, it obviously means something more than a venereal gesture or an animalistic show of force. 

Why not indulge her? He draws back his own lips, knowing his teeth by now to be pearly white and regrettably perfect, and the crowd goes wild as she raises her eyebrows and vaults over the edge of the stage to find her seat. What an abstruse girl.

Embroiled in the hot shame of taking part in this cursed pantomime, he almost misses the most important statement of all. His face is still burning under the soot-grey foundation when Technoblade sweeps past the microphone in a blur of militant fuchsia and grabs it from the stand.

"-r prudence and spirit, and I look forward to meeting you for the first time." The message could not be more clear. For all intents and purposes, their ill-advised little sojourn in the dressing room never happened. He dips his head as if in obeisance. Dave beams at him, and they both pretend it doesn't edge on a sneer.

Tommy is next and last. Behind the insubstantial shield of a vapid smile, he looks absolutely terrified. Prey in a room full of predators, Wilbur's imagination supplies unhelpfully. District 8, if his memory serves him more faithfully. He fiddles with his coattails in the absence of a distraction and waits for the watchful crowd to be silent.

"Wilbur, uh," he croaks at last, and his voice cracks so painfully that they both wince. "It's an...um. It's an honour to be here for the first time and, then, and have the Victor be someone like you." What's that supposed to mean? They both know it's not true. They both know that _someone like him is_ a damning fucking phrase.

But Tommy doesn't elaborate on the word vomit as the spectators titter, just balls his hands in the fabric of his trousers and shuffles rigidly back to Wilbur's side. He proffers a candid, what-can-you-do kind of smirk, but the kid just looks further stricken with fear. Right, yeah. That makes sense.

He'd be scared too.


	5. discover

Gala etiquette may be lost on him at first, but Wilbur picks up quickly the song and dance of entertaining the eternally bored. A sly remark, a secretive smile, an exaggerated moment of tiredness is all it takes to maintain his flock of admirers for hours. Wine-drunk and woozy, one partygoer drapes her webbed hand over his shoulder and comments glibly on Pyrocynical's absence. He laughs it off, tries not to twist away. Her grip tightens.

The party is grotesque, because of course it is, but it teaches Wilbur an important lesson. Nobody is going to rescue him. Especially if he can't fend for himself.

It's nothing new. JC had pitied him too much to be helpful, with or without Minx's meddling. He's determined to make sure that if this ever happens again, the kid won't be alone. So he pretends to adore the Capitol folk with all his heart, and for their hypothetical sponsoring of a hypothetical child it's virtually worth the way they look at him. Like a dangerous, but conclusively captive animal contained entirely for their entertainment. If that's what they want in return for any kind of future? Then he's happy to oblige.

Arguably too many smoke-themed jokes later, Wilbur shelters his growing nausea by crouching behind the nearest table. It looks ready to buckle under the weight of candied fruits, sugary sweetmeats and a collection of peculiar confits he can't even begin to identify. Scarcity seems impossible here. To live in the Capitol and truly understand how life is for the District people, even more so. Still, he feels squeamish just looking up at the bounty. The lump in his throat, one that he had barely noticed until now, seems to double in size as he totters back into view.

Lightheaded, he tries to focus on his shoes and instead finds himself reeling from his own visage. As if trapped in the polished floor, it too looks up at him with horror in its repulsive blank eyes. Wilbur tumbles over himself, coughing, and everyone within earshot laughs warmly as he sends one of the guests flying. But it's not a guest at all.

"Woah, there. Where's the fire?" If he hadn't recognised him during the welcome, he certainly does now. Josh Allen offers him a hand, impassive, and despite himself he takes it.

"No fire, just smoke," Wilbur jokes caustically, letting himself be heaved to his feet. "Jawsh. Nice to meet you, dude."

"If that's true, then you're dumber than you look," the Victor of the 51st Hunger Games points out, casual, spearing something doused in rusty sauce with a fork. Fair enough. He can't imagine eating himself.

Josh isn't amused. It's becoming possible, to look at him, that he doesn't have the capacity to be amused. Regardless, Wilbur presses on and asks how he's spending the evening. This isn't the arena. Manners will surely save him.

"I'm eating," he says as one would to a toddler, like it's a revelation. "Highlight of my year, this food." It's hard to tell if he's kidding. "I'm kidding. Wow, you're easy to read. Maybe work on that." Chewing leisurely, he jerks his head towards the nearest open door. Wilbur's too tired to feign curiosity, but he goes anyway. At least this guy isn't wearing more makeup than clothes.

Gliding past the patrons with all possible grace, Wilbur slows his pace to let Josh catch up. He doesn't quite like him, he realises - but the feeling is one of mutual indifference. Part of it is the way he moves. It's deliberate and expressionless, sparing no energy for things like flourish and countenance. Where Minx had been an open book from the beginning, and an intriguing one at that, Jawsh is a blank page. Nothing can be gleaned from his calculated gait and fallow tone. And that puts Wilbur on edge.

"The way I see it," Josh says matter-of-factly, side-stepping someone's layered dress, "you've got options. Mingle with the elite. Attempt vainly to foster conversation with me. Or, and this is purely hypothetical." He scratches his nose. "Or we can both dip under totally false pretences and actually enjoy our day at home. Doesn't that sound nice?"

Whilst the word 'home' absolutely doesn't sit well with him, it sounds very nice indeed.

"When you put it like that..."

They've arrived at the arched doorway. It opens onto a walkway, onto the real outside air. He never would have known, otherwise, and his internal opinion of Josh ticks over that bit further.

A trellis allows tangled flowers to flourish along the chalky stone, each old brick weathered and stamped with the worn crest of District 2. The view is gorgeous, huge buildings and fireworks and bright neon as far as Wilbur can see. Naturally he doesn't trust an inch of it. He stretches over the stonework to get a better view and Josh goes completely, famously still.

"Ach. Please don't pitch yourself off. I really don't feel like doing the paperwork."

"What makes you think I....dude. What's stopping me?" he asks instead.

In all honesty he hadn't even considered it, but he's intrigued by how Josh can possibly justify the existence of a Victor. He expects a lot of possible bullshit reasoning, but nothing like what Jawsh actually says:

"That depends entirely on how many people you care about back home." 

Wilbur thinks about it at length, holds up nine fingers and lets slip a worried tut as Josh's expression doesn't change, but his posture does. Until he recovers, he looks almost crooked. "Holy...nine. Well. There's your answer. Are we going, or what?"

"Joooosh, you're _such_ a dick." Before he can consider the ramifications of Josh's words, Angel careens around the archway and into Wilbur's chest. He holds her at arm's length; she smells like sea salt and rotten fruit, cradling the gas mask like an unruly child. If he didn't notice her presence he must be getting rusty. "You can't do this every year! You'll get him in trouble!"

"That's rather the idea." Ah. He's been boofed. He looks pleadingly at Josh over Angel's head and he just shrugs; Wilbur watches the ghost of a smile play about his lips with new interest. Not a blank page, then, but a dense one.

"No." It's said with such startling sobriety that Wilbur tears his attention from her counterpart and turns to look at her. "No, you're both staying here this time. I'll chaperone if I have to."

"I-pfft! Toxxxic. Buddy. 'Chaperone'. I'm way older than you, and so much older than new guy over here, it's not even funny. Twenty-three," Josh adds quickly for Wilbur's benefit. He doesn't really care. There are bigger questions on his mind.

Speaking to Angel is surreal following the half a dozen years of virulent propaganda surrounding her very existence. About a week into her Games, a noxious toxin was released into the jungle of the arena. History remembers it as boring. But he remembers eavesdropping by the slit of the living room door even after his parents had strategically banished him to bed, and it was not fucking boring.

Despite her size and score Angel had adapted the best, climbed the best. Survived the best. They'd made the mistake of giving her the mask first, and then it had all been over in a matter of hours. Shine your boots, do your schoolwork, be good whilst we're at sea and perhaps The Angel of Death won't-

She catches him staring. "I know," she snaps, sudden, and he's caught off guard before understanding that his agitation has been misread. She must have thought he was looking at those huge and tactless wings, sympathetic to her _oh so horrible_ plight. Not quite. To be frank, he's scared shitless of her. "Try not to think about it. Look on the bright side! At least you only have to do this thrice. We've been through the wringer by now." A broad definition of 'bright side', but if it helps her sleep at night.

"Living life on the edge, are we?" Josh asks before she can say anything else. It sounds flippant, but he reaches over to pluck the glass from her hand and Wilbur notices that his own is shaking. "Loose lips sink ships. No more for you."

Angel pouts but nods, and the telltale slurring behind her words fades impressively fast. "Fiiiine. I'll be quiet. Just stick with us, Wilbur. It's shitty of Pyro to beg off helping you on your first year, and we're the next best thing." She glances at Josh, and then out at the illuminated cityscape. "I...I know all the questions can be overwhelming." The questions are actually the only manageable part. But he doesn't tell her that.

After their interventions, it's marginally easier. The delicacies and drink hold no allure for him, so he answers invasive personal questions and hides behind the others when it gets too much. He finds it difficult to be fond of Angel and Josh (especially with their cultural impact), but entirely too easy to enjoy their company. At one point Wilbur notices himself begrudgingly chuckling along with his dry comments and her uncomplicated wisecracks and begins to think.

Will it always be like this? Will his life always be a series of small happinesses, followed in immediacy by the great unavoidable guilt? When, like these people, will he stop caring?

"Penny for your thoughts, Soot?" Caught red-handed, he snaps out of thought and crafts a smirk like armour against Josh's inquisitive eyes.

"I don't _think."_ He screws up his face in ersatz disgust. "Thinking is for losers."

"Hear, hear," agrees a familiar voice from across the ballroom. It's Minx, eating gingerly and messily with many spectators, and she looks so tired. She dislodges something from the base of her neck, hissing with pain, and rolls it up in her napkin. In seconds it's soaked through with that fake and vivid red. "Nobody'll notice. Can we go home now? My hair's ruined." Not yet. Not whilst the sun still sits in the sky, if he had to guess. He's ready to joke about it until Angel hushes her, placid smirk shattered by a very real fear that sinks into his gut like glass. To opine that this isn't the arena anymore is the exact kind of naïveté that's going to fail him.

So Wilbur greets the next round of hangers-on enthusiastically, if absently, and decides that when JustAMinx calls Floor 5 home it feels a little less like a lie.

There's something surreal to it. Waiting there in the entrance hall, reluctant to make the first move, Wilbur sees some of the people he's meant to live with for the rest of his life as themselves instead of the celebrities they're made out to be.

Vikk steps out of the circle first. He takes off his still rapidly changing cufflinks and grinds them under his heel with a crunching, popping sound. He unclips his cape - Wilbur catches a glimpse of the huge ivory 'V' sewn into the fabric - and leaves before it flutters to the marble. Hovering next to the lift like it might offer some miraculous means of escape, Tommy watches him go with one sad human eye and starts to dig his nails into the makeup around the other. Clumps of forest green fall to the floor in gross swathes. It's like he's skinning some mammoth fish. Wilbur feels someone tap him on the shoulder and very proudly manages not to bolt.

"Jacket."

"Hm?"

"Give me your damn jacket," Minx rasps. "I'm not bearin' this creepy shitshow a second longer than I have to."

Oh. Wilbur turns away and hears Minx tear off what's left of the dress. He passes her his blazer without looking and snorts weakly when she gives the all-clear and sits down roughly on a dresser worth more than his parents' beloved seiner - its like a cloak on her.

Made conspicuous only by not grasping at her costume like everyone else, Angel's been staring down at the mask in her hands with an expression like wet sand. Wilbur observes her for a second too long and wonders if he should say something. Suddenly, she flings it into the ruined lift with deadly accuracy. It bounces back into the room, dented on one side, and crackles into life. He looks away before it can scare him again. Like a coward.

"Wilbur! Hi! I think you seem lovely, and I can't wait to meet you."

Angel has frozen completely, breathing labourious. The others stop discarding their outfits to watch her, and despite his lackadaisical aura even Josh follows suit.

"Wilbur! Hi! I think you seem lovely, and I can't wait to meet you."

The filtered tone triggers something in her. She kicks it with a shrill, tight shout of anger, and sighs with satisfaction when it doesn't speak again. The tension leaves the air for a heartbeat. He sighs, at the same time as Angel.

"Wilbur! Hi! I think you seem lovely, and I can't wait-"

Before it can loop again, Technoblade traipses over and sinks his nails into the casing. The recording stutters and spits eerily, then falls silent. Sinking to his knees next to it, he sighs a patient sigh and begins to pry the plastic apart. Wilbur can't for the life of him figure out the kind of game the kid is playing. This is a serious problem, considering that he wants to win it.

The man in wires, whose name Wilbur still can't recall, kicks off his boots and pats Angel on the shoulder. As if on cue Tommy moves from his listless peeling to comfort her, and Minx says relatively calming words from her perch behind him.

Josh just stands there as he has since their arrival, helpless, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. Wilbur can relate. There's fake blood everywhere courtesy of Technoblade and Minx, and not a Peacekeeper in sight. A collection of fantastical phantasms surrounds him with no real threats to ground them, and he begins to question whether any of it is real.

"Sorry 'bout all this," Pyro pipes up. He's hovering just inside the hallway, as if unwilling or unable to step over the threshold. "I'll take the fall for it, don't worry."

Now Wilbur regrets being cruel to him before. Given the opportunity, he sees now why someone like Pyrocynical would want to skip the gala. Unfair to do it, definitely unfair, but hasn't it always been?

"You'd better," snarls Tommy out of nowhere, and it's the first time Wilbur's seen him be anything but terrified since last year. Pyro doesn't argue with him, just blinks and stands aside as he and the shorter Victor gently coax Angel down the hall. She's still wearing the hideous pink frock, barefoot and lost and miserable, and as a thirteen-year-old guides her to her room she looks almost too young to be here.

As soon as they're out of sight, Josh stonily points to a door that holds no significance to Wilbur. Gravely, Pyro nods back. He's so absolutely exhausted by knowing and guessing that he doesn't even try to stop the adults from leaving. Their raised voices float back through the hallway as soon as they're gone.

Which leaves Minx, Technoblade and himself. A maudlin trio of fucked up kids in an adult's world, clothed in bones and blood. No love is lost between the three of them, but at least they're old enough to understand how he feels - and young enough not to ignore it. Wilbur doesn't feel safe when he falls asleep, but even with his nightmares watching over him he feels the closest he has to it in a very long time.

No nightmare. He wakes up with this in his mind, the memory of sleeping dreamlessly, and tries to burrow back to that unconscious place. It doesn't work.

"Is...William okay? You know him better than I do," admits a boy above him who sounds rather like Technoblade. He has the rare kind of voice that makes everything sound like an extremely funny joke, albeit one that only he knows the punchline to. George's voice.

George doesn't want to talk to him anymore, though.

"William? He's called Wilbur, dipshit." Minx bristles defensively, but there's something kinder in it. Maybe they're friends, somehow. He keeps his breathing even and eyelids restful.

"Right. My mistake."

"Yeah, well, he's probably just tired. D'ya wanna give me a hand moving him again?"

"Like you could do it yourself," he drones. "Sixteen, and he must have, what? Half a foot on you?" He's startled by their banter, and even more so when he hears Minx's barking laugh without a hint of irony. Technoblade chuckles too, then quiets. "Nah, he'll be fine. I'll leave you to it. Time to check on Vikk again." He sounds less than delighted by the prospect. There's the soft sequential thud of someone trained to walk on light feet, and then nothing. When Wilbur is completely sure he's gone, he opens his eyes and sits up.

"Dunno why you're so scared of Techno." Techno. Is that what they call him? It's humanising. "He's a sweetheart, really," Minx continues, lounging on one of the sofas with headphones on. She's changed into a jumper and jeans, and he's reminded forcefully that the seasons are changing. Outside the Capitol, the world is moving on.

"I'm not _scared_ of him, dude. He's just...kind of intense." Understatement of the year, despite the precise phrasing.

"Aw, gimme a break. In fact, you're clearly terrified of all of us - we're not gonna up and eat you, now, are we?" She's barely paying attention to him now, engrossed in some electronic game, and he leans back against the arm of the sofa. He's been covered in a blanket. A real blanket, with ugly stitching and coarse fibres. Not from District 4 by any stretch of the imagination. Anyway, it makes him feel at home.

"Maybe you would." That makes her snort.

"Yeah, maybe. Oh, fuck this! Tryhards. Tryhards, the lot of 'em. I need to practice, though."

He peeks over her arm, deciding not to mention the ruddy stain suffusing the seat behind her head or question her strange words. The bright colours hurt his eyes. He studies it anyway, until he understands the object and frivolity of the game.

"That one looks like you," he teases experimentally. The enemy on the screen is almost like a dog, but much larger, with bloody fangs and narrowed cobalt eyes. It's called a 'wolf'. 

Minx seizes up, which he takes as a good sign and starts to chuckle at her crotchety expression. It really does look like her, is the funny thing. Teeth and frown and all. He can't stop laughing. This is amazing, this is great! He needs to make friends here if he's going to survive, and for all the disinformation surrounding her Minx is the only one he's even beginning to trust.

"Oh, yeah, laugh it up," she mutters. Wilbur, distracted by finding an opportunity for amusement, does. He doesn't spot the sour note in her tone until it's too late. "Everyone have a giggle at the beast, at the real animal of District 10!"

He didn't mean it like that. Not at all. But now it's too late to take back, and in the involuntary shudder of her hands against the fabric he recognises the same white-hot wrath that had almost possessed him to ruin the welcome ceremony. Wilbur thinks about jellyfish and scraped hands and Twitch gamblers, and he is fearful and still in a way fucking Techno could never know. 

That's all he can do. Incomprehensibly, it only infuriates Minx further.

"I may not know much, in your estimation. Don't think I haven't noticed you, watchin' the lot of us like we're somethin' different. But I do know how you raise a fuckin' animal, Wilbur, and what you never, _ever_ do to an animal," she's right up in his face now, but he doesn't do her the disservice of shying away, "is let it know that you're afraid."

Shit.

"I'm so sorry, Minx, I-"

"Rebecca." It's sharp.

"What?" He's stunned into uncommon speechlessness.

"My name's Rebecca. It's just us. Please don't..." She sniffs, wiping her hands on the cushions, and she's crying, deflated. "Please don't call me fuckin' Minx, when it's just us. I'm not her. I'm not. I promise you, I really am not."

There it is, the difference between them. He's been so selfishly doing his damnedest to blur the lines between himself and his persona, whilst for almost half a decade now she's been grappling with the contrary animal they so desire her to be. A stingray to flirt with in the harbour, a dwarf shark to tease with scraps of bait. Just a minx, and nothing more.

He nods, finding it impossible to articulate how deeply he understands. Her answering silence is expectant, punctuated by the music spilling from her abandoned headphones. Clearly she wants the same from him. It's not something he has to give.

"I don't think I'm like that, Mi-Rebecca," he says as thoughtfully as he can without sobbing. It doesn't match her red-rimmed eyes and intelligent face, but he supposes that's the point. "Can you just call me, like, Wilbur? But drop the Soot. I'm not a, a-a Soot anym-more." It would seem he's crying after all.

She nods like this makes perfect sense and pulls him up to the seat with a motherly cluck. Without a second thought he cups her cheek in one hand, just as the escort had to him. This time it's the District-wide indication of deference, to a parent or captain or officer, but she just makes an affronted noise and shakes it off.

"My fuckin' _shit,_ you people are so formal," she grumbles. "C'mere." She's shorter and younger and pointier at the elbows than he is, but the hug itself is unexpectedly...nice. It's nice, if exorbitant. He doesn't need a hug. "There you go, you frigid asshole. Let it all out, District 10 style." She wallops him on the back and smiles faintly, lips pressed together. Then she curses in pain. "Oh, fuck, I forgot about the teeth!" 

They both start laughing again at that, ugly wheezing that comes out sluggish and then all at once. He takes heavy, shaky breaths between bursts and uses it as an excuse to hide his sobs. If she notices, she doesn't point it out. Maybe he does need a hug.

It's already been too long since he's had something genuinely platonic with someone. Oh, the Capitol folk are quick to lavish him with gifts and attention to their own unknowable ends. Olivia the stylist is compassionate enough in her own entitled way. This is different. This is District friendship, despite their cultural divide, and it smarts to know that it's all he has now.

He was wrong, to believe that Rebecca could somehow fix the premeditated damage of the very Hunger Games. At least he has this: the knowledge that they can be safe under each others' protection for a spell. For that short time, it doesn't hurt any less. But the shared pain is doubtless a lighter kind.


	6. pastime

About two weeks in, it occurs to Wilbur that he could have just stuck it out and stayed in his room.

That probably would have been a much kinder experience than this. His father would reach up to ruffle his hair and say that he always had to make things difficult for himself. Dan would call him an idiot and laugh. But it's no big deal, really. He's taking things at his own pace. The altercation after the gala has driven home that he can't just wallow in self-rebuke forever. Still, his motivation to participate dwindles further with every passing day. The floor itself is large enough to house a small village. For too long, he takes advantage of that fact.

He orders plain fish at odd hours, because eating with the others is so far outside what he's capable of that he can't even imagine trying. They leave him alone when he asks, and in return he skirts around the rooms where they most commonly congregate. Sometimes his palms itch with the urge to gather something again and he joins the attendants in their constant rotation of cleaning around the halls. They look at him strangely but never, ever protest.

Once, only once, he accidentally crosses paths with someone. Pyro is wrestling with headphones in the billiards room when he gets there, deaf to Wilbur's presence in the doorway and talking to what sound to be his parents. It can't be going well; between sentences he stalks around the pool table and pots each ball with meticulous accuracy and quiet displeasure.

The clatter of plastic on plastic is mesmerising.  
Wilbur knows that this is not for him, that he should leave before he can no longer escape notice. But this is the longest he's gone without seeing another person, questionable ethics of not counting the Avoxes among them aside. In the moment he feels almost outside himself with powerlessness. Normally so well put-together, Pyro now looks more and more frustrated between shots and progressively more jaded self-justifications to his little computer's camera.

Whatever it's about, the argument with his family dwindles away. They must point Wilbur out in the background at some point, as pale and as tired as an uninvolved ghost, because Pyro slams the lid down and turns to face him with murderous eyes.

He bolts, and only when he's reached the relative safety of his gaudy room does he realise that Pyro was crying.

Wilbur does try staying there at first, but it's boring and unnerving. Messing with the high-tech computer bolted to his desk yields nothing but an error screen. Facing off with the cameras for too long unsettles his stomach. Being alone, in a room that belongs only to him, full of things provided only for his use, feels wasteful and wrong.

Which is why after that, falling into the kind of inverse routine spawned by relentless exploration, he relinquishes himself to Floor 5. Life as a Victor is infinitely more tedious than before, despite the abundance of strange rooms with purposes he can barely suspect. To try and map at least some of them out in his brain is as good a distraction as any. Until, one otherwise unremarkable solitary day, he finds the pool room.

There are some minor issues to work through. It's heated all the way through every time he enters, a dizzying use of precious electricity. Whenever he tries to pull off anything more impressive than a dive, the servants seem to take it as a literal suicide threat. No plants, no fish, nothing living joins him in the water. It's as if someone has constructed the opposite of an ocean. Total dead space. All of this is eclipsed by the sheer joy of being in the water again.

He spends the entirety of that first day adjusting to the novelty of swimming in freshwater. It's certainly harder, but no less fun. Next it becomes a place to think, a veil of privacy to ponder long and hard on what to do with his life, now that he so unexpectedly has one. For a while he decides that _not much_ is a satisfactory answer. But the question always returns the moment he leaves the pool, and there's a clear solution to that. 

It's late. Late enough to wander down the corridor in shorts and a cotton shirt, feeling warm and full and something approaching happy. In one hand he has balanced a bowl of crackers and a towel, in the other a pair of suspiciously well-made flippers that had been lined up neatly on his unused bed. How very giving.

But there's already a swimmer in the pool when he gets there, slowly circuiting in the dimmed lamplight. This has never happened before. He was stupid to think it wouldn't. Wilbur considers leaving before he's caught, but whoever it is breaks the surface with a gasp and waves.

"Hey! You're Wilbur, yeah?" He nods, unthinkingly, and feels the smile droop on his face. "I don't think we've met. I'm Michael."

So clean it's almost luminous, tinted an unnatural sapphire, the pool laps at his feet. The very little he remembers about Michael Reeves makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Wilbur doesn't know why he shucks off his shirt, slithers in belatedly and treads water.

"Sorry for not being around much," he feels the need to say, avoiding Michael's intent examination as best he can by studying the tiles beneath them, each bleached white as bone. Hoarse from misuse and whatever keeps the water here so bare, his throat can barely produce a whisper.

Michael honks alarmingly, a sound that Wilbur only verifies as a laugh when he puffs out bubbles from his nose.

"Don't worry about it. I'd say you're doing better than most of us. By the end of my first week I'd, uh," he flops onto his back pensively, "broken three doors, jumped off the balcony and screamed myself to death at Josh. Like, a bunch of times. Why would anyone hold this shit against you?"

 _Because I hate it here. Because I hate all of you. Because I hate myself._ Wilbur grasps at these mantras like straws, but they're fading. He doesn't hate it here. Everything surrounding that regard is ugly and red and raw, but in the material sense he's never known this kind of luxury. 

He can't bring himself to hate the Victors either, knowing that they've been through all this before him and survived it. With smiles, no less. Knowing Rebecca's turmoil and Techno's horror and Angel's demons, he can't hate them without the sympathetic tinge of doubt. As for himself...

"Because I'm new," he reckons out loud, "and I'm angry."

Hoisting himself onto the ladder, Michael digests this with a discerning smirk. Wilbur's never met someone who displays this kind of benevolent mischief. Maybe it's a Victor thing, maybe it's a District 3 thing. Maybe it's a Michael Reeves thing.

"Good place to be angry, this," he proffers lazily, like he's discussing the tide schedule and not a very, very dangerous sentiment. "Exactly one camera, and no fucking _mics!"_ He yells out the final word, as if to illustrate his point.

Microphones. He hadn't even considered the possibility. "The water vapour ruins them, you see. So much incredible technology here and they couldn't even solve long-term waterproofing by themselves. A shame, really. But no mics."

"How do you know that, though?" he asks, head swirling with what other terrifying surveillance methods he could have missed in his ignorance. Nothing he does here is overtly rebellious or embarrasing, he's not an idiot, and yet.

"I have my ways," says Michael, wiggling his eyebrows with exaggerated secrecy. "Ah, it's good to know I'm not the only one that misses swimming. Nowadays I kinda wish it was somewhere with a current, though."

Kicking his legs and watching the ripples spread uninterrupted, Wilbur finds himself humming in agreement. Then he finds himself wondering how exactly a District 3 kid remembers swimming in a current and jerks up straight in the water. Maybe there's more to Michael than he can see.

"Maybe I should come to breakfast," he murmurs, at the exact same time Michael says, "Maybe you should come to breakfast."

What exactly he had expected, he isn't sure. Extravagant platters of flawless food, set out on one of the long tables he had found on his excursions. The bumbling gratitude to be extended to the Avoxes. Terrifying people making small talk over their- maybe not quite so dramatic there, Will. Anyway, what he doesn't expect is a family.

Michael instructs him to wait in the hallway so he can let the others know Wilbur is joining them. The guy never seems to stop moving, shifting from foot to foot, tapping one bare foot loudly against the tile. Through the wall, it sounds like he's loudly telling a group made up of exclusively Victors to, quote unquote, "be normal fucking people for five goddamn seconds." Holy shit. When he steps inside, Wilbur is obliterated by loneliness.

It's just a kitchen. Sure, it's immaculate and overly fancy. There's a picnic table. But there are people everywhere; Pyro is lounging on the countertop, and Tommy is imitating Josh's mannerisms behind his back to the point of tears of laughter. Michael hovers a hand over Wilbur's shoulder fleetingly, but startles at the sound of Josh pouring some colourful cereal grain into his bowl and melts into the ordered chaos.

Overcome, Wilbur is surprised to find that he has to steel himself to join in. He's used to a large friendship group, to the ebb and flow of dynamics, but this isn't the same. In this he is beleaguered by a kind of inevitability - either he will befriend the other Victors, or he will always be alone. So they all know it's only a matter of time. And he has all the time in the world.

He yanks the biggest apple from a woven bowl by Pyro's knee and shines it on the hem of his shirt, more out of habit than anything. It doesn't need the attention. With such an audience every movement feels forced. When he holds it up to the light the fruit is unblemished and engorged, cartoonish in its symmetry. Suddenly Wilbur doesn't feel quite so hungry.

Everyone does a great job of pretending not to look away when he turns around. At least Rebecca is visibly gratified when he slides onto the bench next to her and takes a loud bite.

"You're doin' better than I expected." She says it neutrally, prodding at her eggs with a thankfully plain fork.

In lieu of answering he chews on a hunk of apple and watches how the others talk. It's a big room, but it feels almost homely with so many people in one spot. Only Vikk and Techno are missing, which is more than fine with Wilbur. Wandering the halls of Floor 5 alone has only made him more aware of the bars of their collective cage. It makes sense that they'd choose instead to flock together.

Whilst Angel and Josh are picking at pastries at the other end of the table, harrassing and being harassed by Michael, the other two are still bantering over each other. Their genuine smiles are smaller, brighter things. Pyro jumps down off the granite to posture and Tommy takes great delight in flexing his superior height. They make a right pair; the oldest and youngest Victors of the sixth decade, shadow-boxing by the sideboard without a care in the world.

"I suppose I got bored before I broke any doors," Wilbur deadpans finally, watching them, and Rebecca leans back to cackle delightedly even as Michael sputters to defend himself. The girls smirk guardedly. Even Josh raises his eyebrows in an entertained kind of way, a small concession. He counts that as a win.

He starts loudly working his way through the fruit bowl, to Rebecca's great distress, and then for what must be the first time in weeks he smiles. What was he so worried about? This is workable. This is domestic. He likes these people, if he squints. The worst is over now, and surely everything is going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i need some more time to work out the plot beats, but i wanted to make sure i didn't let this fall to the wayside in the meantime so here is a domestic meander i wrote today - mainly to tighten things towards the next drama! :)
> 
> not much happens, but every story needs its filler i suppose


	7. dynamo

Out on the balcony, it is bitterly cold. Winter has taken in its grip even the Capitol's pampered concourse, and frost spreads up the tower below in eerie patterns. It's uncomfortable at best. This place has a growing reputation for conflict. Especially after the opening ceremony. Wilbur still doesn't know exactly what happened that night, only that Josh and Pyro are still on neutrally glacial terms. The residual tension is worth it in return for that gentle rarity of being outside, of existing alone with the open air and sunrise.

Which he is not.

"Morning," he grunts to the other Victor, who doesn't acknowledge him in any way. Without his cape, without the loud smokescreen of saturated colour, there's none of that caged unpredictability that he had oozed onstage. In a plain shirt and jeans, Vikk just looks like a dude. And a young one at that. Sobering is the reminder, then, that neither of them can ever live up to the at once childish and unattainable names of the Games.

Vikkstar. Wilbur Soot. Such little ridiculousnesses! Such stupid jokes. _An arsonist and a constellation walk into a bar, and_ _notice on impact that they're living in a cage._

Before he can think of a punchline Vikk raises a bottle of water to his lips, and Wilbur notices the pot haphazardly balanced on the railing. A flower of some kind, which seems conceptually frivolous for a Victor. What use are pretty flowers when the salt spray of the tide comes in and shrivels them?

Since the pool encounter Wilbur has forced himself day by day into a healthier routine. It's difficult. October's almost over, but the dreamlike transitional state of his mind is not. Most days he drifts from room to room and watches the girls play videogames. More than a few times he has to ask Tommy to back off when he doggedly tries to include him in everything they all do. In a way it's charming. The kid's lonely, Wilbur grasps, and he indulges him as often as he can like an excitable puppy. It gets old fast. He can't imagine growing up here, receding into childhood quite that way.

It's never going to be perfect; sometimes there's nothing to do but scream and sob and covet sleep and pretend the unsecured door is bolted tight. If everyone else's regular wordless disappearances are anything to go by, that's not going to change any time soon.

Even though Rebecca always waves off his half-baked suspicions, it's becoming ever easier to see that Techno and Vikk are purposefully avoiding him. He's not being unreasonable. He's not.

"Look, I'm really sorry," and he knows it's insecure but there's precious little impulse control lying around to not at least probe, "but do you have some kind of problem with me?"

At first he thinks the gale has stolen his words, when Vikk doesn't move. Then he hears him sigh, just the once, and pour the rest of his water into the plantpot.

"I'd never mentored a twelve-year-old before," he says conversationally. "Honestly, it's just the strangest thing. They barely know what's going on."

Wilbur is chilled to the bone. Not by the wind, either.

"I-I'm sorry?"

"Look." Vikk wipes a patch of ice from the railing and leans over it to stare at the park below. Unlike his single bud, the blooms clustered there are exotically coloured and overly fragrant, and they don't wither under the wintry cold like they should. Like they _should,_ for fuck's sake. That small thing frustrates Wilbur more than it should.

It's entirely possible that these flowers were planted fifty-eight years ago, and will persist fifty-eight years more without noteworthy change. After all, there is no tide to wilt them here. "I'm sure you're a nice guy, Wilbur," Vikk assures him without turning. "I'm sure we'll get along, even, in time." He hopes so. "But I really, really can't be around you right now. Sorry. I hadn't taken Techno for the type, but I think he feels the same way."

And Wilbur can't disagree, not without sounding absolutely insane with paranoia. It strikes him like a Peacekeeper's baton that the District 2 woman was also Josh's tribute, the sad District 3 girl Michael's, on and on eight times over.

Anger flares up again at the realisation, less alien than the first time and all the more worrying because of it. Nothing can be done about the other tributes now. This is just another way to divide them, to crush the only friendships spanning District lines in all of Panem before they can even _start._ But it works. So he bows his head and leaves Vikk to the coming snow.

Meandering around the corridors, trying to stop up the gaps in his sprawling internal map of Floor 5, Wilbur is fine. Until he hears the only person here he can already force himself to care about in this beautiful prison screaming bloody murder and it all goes fucking sideways.

By the time his mind's caught up he's already running. These people aren't his friends, at least not yet, but they might be the only ones who have any idea what he's going through. Especially Rebecca. This time around he can't just sit back and let the worst happen.

He reaches the main corridor. Vikk bursts through a door to his left with so much urgency he fully bounces off the wall, earlier dejection having given way to a pure and righteous dismay that Wilbur feels on his own face too. Neither of them are going to make it in time, if what he thinks is happening is. They're close enough to make out her words now - and it's not promising.

"You can't, you can't, please, he didn't mean it!" The sound of a scuffle. "I promise it was me, it was me, it was my fault. He loves all this bullshit, you know he does, _please..."_

By the time they've reached the common room, Vikk and Wilbur are silently being tailed by Michael and Angel. Their faces, when he steals a look back, are funereal with a sombre acceptance that makes him feel sick.

On the sofa Tommy has one white-knuckled hand around Rebecca's wrist, every line of their bodies taut with tension. She doesn't appreciate being held back any more than he looks comfortable with it.

Techno is standing at ease in the middle of the empty space, hands clasped behind his back. A single masked Peacekeeper is sitting in what is usually referred to as Josh's armchair, weapon holstered, talking quietly.

It's not what Wilbur expected. In some ways it's worse.

"The President also recognises," says the Peacekeeper, in the stilted manner of an actor reading a newly altered script, "that teenage defiance can manifest itself in unfortunate ways. He asks only that this be a lesson concerning the virtues of our great nation."

"It was a joke," Rebecca whispers into Wilbur's ear under the guise of a swooping embrace, dragging Tommy behind her. It rings hollow under the approaching harried clomp of Pyro's combat boots. "It was just one joke, on one stream. He told them it was his idea, Wilbur, I don't know what t'fuck to do!"

It's terribly, terribly smart. Even within the minute wiggle room afforded by persona, for all the public knows Technoblade is loyalist to the bone. The kid's a District 1 Career, for fuck's sake. Meanwhile a solid half of JustAMinx's branding relies on her temerity, and such a public failure of that could doom her.

In ghastly contrast Techno just nods to everything asked of him, white as a sheet. Yes, he will abstain from intra-floor and District contact for the immediate future. Yes, he understands how important the safety of his home District is. Yes, he believes this a fair punishment, befitting a thoughtless comment that could incite needless rebellion.

By the time Josh and Pyro skid into the room, gazes shuttered and fists raised, it's all over. It's their relief that concerns Wilbur more than anything else. If this is the best case scenario, things must be more heavily policed here than he could could ever imagine. For lack of a better response he hugs Rebecca and Tommy so tightly to him that it might just be the only thing holding the three of them together.

"Enjoy your birthday," the Peacekeeper nods semi-ironically to Rebecca, and retreats towards the lift like their ass is on fire. Based on the way Michael's hand is inching towards his pocket, they know what's good for them. "You're all mad," they grumble at a safe distance. "I don't know why he doesn't just let us shut you up."

"Bastard!" Wilbur spits after them, and Rebecca elbows him in the ribs so hard he almost collapses. What Wilbur doesn't spit, as Tommy mutely brews them all a drink, is that she certainly won't go unpunished.

Sure enough, when the early birds among them rise the next morning Rebecca finds a nest of cardboard boxes piled neatly in the entrance hall. Everything he had seen in her train car, her rooms in the Justice Buildings, her suite in the Training Centre. Each is reflected in the once again flawless chrome of the lift. The intended message is brutally clear.

Predictably, almost comfortingly, he watches her grief turn to rage.

"I spent so," her hand flies out, "many," the fabric of the punching bag ripples with the impact, "fuckin'," it rebounds from the wall with a satisfying smack, "months! Months on end I tried to get out of this shithole!"

"Yeah?" Wilbur murmur for the sixth time, glancing up from a sheaf of paper from the wall of the gym. It's tough going, but struggling with the most basic of texts is getting embarrassing and he's become determined to tackle it. In his defence it was never exactly a priority back...home. Uh. Back in District 4.

"Yeah! I'm sixteen next week." That's news to him. Sixteen, in District 4, is everything. Adulthood, apprenticeship, the beginning of the hard transition from child to contributing adult. In the Capitol it must mean next to nothing. "I'm tired, and, and, and I miss Bee, and I can't just do this - be _here_ \- forever."

No matter how much he agrees, Wilbur can't let her put herself in any more danger. He's been here a few weeks at most. Yet with three years of experience over him Rebecca seems to understand this new arena even less. That or she's purposefully ignoring its dangers, which might actually be worse.

"That's a political statement," he points out with dispassionate gloom. Nothing incriminating, nothing denoting opinion. "You should be more careful."

"Yeah? Well, maybe _you_ should be more careful wit' where you point your mout', when you're spewin' that much primo _bullshit_ out of it." With each word her accent broadens, vacillates breathlessly between harsh and melodic. "Fuckin'...you've not even streamed yet, and y'think you've figured out everythin' there is to know about life up here." She runs a hand through tousled hair, sweaty and resentful.

To point it out would be unnecessarily vicious. Yet in that moment, Rebecca - Minx - really does look like the animal Panem thinks she is. "Just let me be, Wilbur. You're sweet. Really." She softens. "Y'just can't help wit' this." 

Scooping up his work, he leaves without another word of argument, and the last thing he hears from behind him is a thunderous roar and the thump of something bulky hitting the floor.

Despite being as large as a dormitory by itself, his room feels oddly cramped. The bed sits undisturbed. Above it is a painting of sunflowers, and he slackly watches it cycle through similar pictures from the embrace of his hammock. He's never put much thought into it before, but nowadays yellow might just be his least favourite colour in the world.

More out of politeness than any kind of practicality, there's a smart rap of his bedroom door. The kid refuses to leave him alone even now. Like clockwork, twice a day, he's invited to play or swim or make food.

"Piss off, Tommy." That should do it. He's not in the mood to spare feelings, just to be alone.

"Bruh. Highly offensive, for one. For two, no."

Oh, shit. He opens the door to look down at Technoblade. No contour, no claws, no crown. Just a teenager in a pink hoodie. Guarded and unamused, he pushes past into the room and raises his eyebrows at the duffel bag. Thus far he's covertly refused to unpack and make this place any semblance of a home. Under Techno's forceful gaze, the gesture feels tacky and immature.

"Pyro...suggested," oh dear, "that whilst I'm not streaming I help you set up your own. Is that going to be a problem?"

Computers aren't really his area. He knows the basics from school, but salt and technology don't mix well and there's something pretty suffocating about little Technoblade guiding him to digital literacy. Oh, fucking whatever. Wilbur shakes his heads and sits back, offering the seat to his left.

"You'd think your mentor would have explained some of this to you," Techno says meaningfully after an exasperated few minutes. Then he has the audacity to frown, like a Career would know literally anything about the average tribute's mentoring experience.

"No point," he snaps, and tries to thaw his own icy tone. "JC's different in person." There's no pleasant way to talk about the ingrained helplessness, the downtrodden passivity behind his mentor's scant advice. "I think he gave up." Saying it out loud feels final. 

At the end of the day, even though JC is almost as sweet as his persona, it had been obvious from the start that he was trying to let Wilbur down gently. From where he's standing it's simply selfish. Fat lot of good it did now that he's won, huh? Now they need to play nice forever and a day.

"I hear that," Techno breathes without smiling, pulling up the intimidating stream interface and fiddling with it incomprehensibly. For maybe the first time since they've met, it's not even confrontational. "Never meet your heroes, right?"

In light of yesterday's conversation with Vikk, Wilbur elects not to make clear that the Victors of District 4 have never been his heroes. More like a mandatory annual funeral. A morbid cultural fascination, at a stretch. He dips his head without answering and returns to soaking in as much online knowledge as he can.

The exact extent of Pyro's interference becomes obvious after an excruciating while of monotone explanation. Whatever barrier sits between them is less aggressive than awkward, but they quickly run out of things to say.

"Who's Bee?" he asks, changing tack as he sees the name flash by once again on his brand new Twitter account.

"Minx's mentor," Techno asserts instantly. When he smiles, it makes him look five years younger. "You'll like her. What's the deal with the bed?"

After that Wilbur picks up the game quickly. Batting questions back and forth with Technoblade whilst he reaches competence with the computer is one of the most surreal experiences of his life.

"Not old enough for one back in District 4," he admits, "so it makes me feel weird. Why is Pyro trying to make us friends?"

Techno snorts delightedly, throws up his hands as if impressed.

"I told him you'd know. Dude," he chuckles, "I just spent like fifteen minutes trying to teach you what a dashboard is. Maybe he thinks you need the help, I dunno. Why didn't Minx know your name?"

"Maybe it's not my name.Who was the hero you met?" His face falls at that, but Techno answers anyway.

"CaptainSparklez. Complicated guy. Are you, like, actually afraid of me?"

"Yeah," Wilbur concedes unthinkingly. Techno blinks at him mid-laugh and then frowns.

He didn't mean to actually say it. The dissipated tension rushes back into the stale air, dense and restrictive. The thing is, no matter how chummy they get, he knows what Technoblade is capable of and vice versa. Whether he's in a whole suit of armour like last year or a highlighter-bright hoodie doesn't change that.

"Okay. Right. Uh, this is dumb." Techno's voice wouldn't shake at something like that, so Wilbur must be imagining it. "I know, test stream! Go. Go, now, do it, go!"

"No, no, I don't think-"

Poise restored, Techno lunges across the desk and clicks 'Go Live' before Wilbur can properly weigh up the benefits of manhandling him out of his chair. There's no time to smoulder, though. Not when the audience is already arriving. 

"Hello, everybody!" After a frozen moment he waves uncertainly at the lens, and obviously there's no response. Only his own worried face reflected back, and the threat of Techno's sudden sneer. And then the tide comes in.

_OMG he really does look like that irl_

_Welcome to Twitch, man!_

_Is he even wearing makeup?_

_i heard he's batshit crazy lmao_

_YOOOOOOOO TECHNOOOO_

_hi wilbur! congrats on winningggg_

Bile rises. Wilbur tries to mimic what he's seen other streamers do, calling to mind the old gambling channels. Responding to the endless chatter like a friend, thanking the watchers constantly for their "support". Each word tastes unnatural and wooden in his mouth, like the half-spoiled salmon they used to sell for cheap in the markets. Probably still do. He wouldn't know, in his fancy shirt, on a computer that probably cost more than his family home, sitting next to fucking _Technoblade._

"I'm just testing out the equipment tonight, folks," he clarifies after a few minutes of vacant boggling and Techno kicking him into speech twice under the table. "Never really used stuff like this before, yeah?"

_good luck!!_

_IT'S OKAY TAKE YOUR TIME DUDE_

_I love him already not gonna lie_

_surely the districts at least have fucking computers lol_

_< message deleted>_

Just a few measly minutes in, he starts shaking. It spreads from his feet into his hands until all he can think about is the camera in tunnel vision. He sees it now, how this could become as addictive as morphling. A colossal crowd of strangers who adore him unconditionally, just because by chance he made it out of their bloodsports alive the first time around. That will not happen again.

He's starting to fragment at the seams. At some point Techno notices, and conveniently remembers that he shouldn't really be onscreen since he made that quote unquote "edgy joke". The stream is over. The number of cameras focused on him drops by one. Wilbur doesn't know what to do with himself but try and breathe.

It sinks in anew, then, that he can never have a normal life. Some insignificant and irrational part of his heart had figured, wait out the ten or twenty years of relevance. Surely then nobody will mind if he goes back home.  
  
But that's not true. He will never progress past an apprentice to a real fisherman. He will never fall in love with a girl and settle down. He will never leave this fucking tower, but to mentor kids into early graves. On the other hand, he will never go without food again. He will never feel the fear of a parent at the Reaping. Is that a fair trade? A pale imitation of freedom paid for by the grim guarantee of poverty and squalor? He doesn't quite know how to answer that question. Maybe he never will.

Whilst he wrestles his breathing back into shape Techno sits unnervingly still but to rest his arms on the desk. He doesn't move to comfort him, but he doesn't leave either. Surely that means something. Wilbur likes to think so.

"Does it. Ever. Stop?" he asks thinly. That's about as precise as he can get in this deception of a room, bugged to the brim. Not to mention, he still doesn't know where the Prince's own views on all this lie. He's a Career born and raised, right? But he lied to the Capitol for Minx. He understands the dangers.

"Not really," Techno says. Understanding, soft, equally wary. Without the audience, without the dynamo of presentation, his arrogance retreats again into bookish lethargy. Technoblade falls away. The abruptness of it is jarring, like sitting next to a deflating balloon. "Trust me on this, man. You, heh, you really don't want it to stop."

For the first time, he sees what had so scared him about Technoblade's eyes for what it is. The gloss of suppressed tears, of a fundamental fear so central to everything he does it may as well be the very ocean itself. And yet, in every way, there is no tide here to cleanse and reset. Just lies upon lies, building up on themselves by the shore.

 _You don't want it to stop._ At the time he merely doesn't understand, but in the years to come Wilbur will look back on this instant as the moment it all started falling apart.


	8. tapestry

Worst of all is the realisation that the Victors' Tower has changed him beyond all hope of return. Colour floods Wilbur's skin now, a Capitol-healthy ruddy pink he himself can only associate with fever and death. Pockets of flesh fill the troughs in his skeleton where they did not before. His stubble, forbidden and eradicated for the Pre-Games, returns with a vengeance. In his hubris, his refusal to prepare a token for something that would surely never happen, it is the only thing that bears even a slight similarity to the boy in his precious few photographs. It itches. The Soots probably wouldn't even recognise him now.

Some days it's worse than that. He floats around as if enshrouded in thick grey fog, the others indistinguishable but for the different shades of sadness behind their eyes. This is not something they can judge him for; if they do, he certainly doesn't notice.

The days before Rebecca's birthday are still in part spent this way, pottering sightlessly around in a daze that tastes like what he imagines of morphling. But beyond his meagre control and shrinking awareness some balance has changed. Techno's subjugation, Rebecca's painful reminder - even the outsider he still considers himself to be knows these are wrong and dangerous deviations from some invisible routine.

This threat keeps him awake. It pulls him from his daze and throws his floormates into high relief. He can no longer think of them as blurred lines in a vaguely antagonistic whole. They exist as eight, as each, as other, as they. It is an undesirable lens through which to view a person. Wilbur has no choice.

Pyro is crushed. What has happened has affected him more than it should have. He must resent Wilbur for seeing it, the open, angry, weeping sore behind his eyes, behind those lips that shout at his mother and smile at the politicians and pucker at the cameras with a sick and inflexible verve. His anger for Rebecca is less familial than that of a slighted officer. It is a wound that has festered for seven years, and Wilbur only adds to it when he pushes against any one of a thousand invisible boundaries. They do not like each other.

Josh is, in his own cool way, as enraged as Wilbur. Again, they do not like each other, but at least with Josh that was never part of the equation. Often they eat together, but he still has to wrestle - with that cool Career-born terror and with the great divide of age between them. There is a stalwart comfort to be drawn from the precious few cracks in his apathy. Whenever he streams, Wilbur likes to wander in and extract an exaggerated rise out of him. It implies personhood.

Angel is the object of his pity. He never voices it and she never brings it up, but they both know. Every adult Victor is to a certain extent exoticised, romanticised, made desirable. Yet she suffers the brunt of it, just in front of Pyro, and that is sad. Haunting, in a way beyond the last vestiges of propaganda in his head that keep surprising him at odd moments. She only ever interacts with him through others, and vice versa, but she laughs when Rebecca lets fly obscenities at him for the crime of "starin' at ev'ryone like you're at th'zoo, bug-eyed cunt!" A zoo, for reference, is a historical facility that housed rare livestock for entertainment. Or so Angel says when he asks about her videogame, haltingly, searching his face for deeper meaning. He feels like he is in a zoo when he is with her. Which side of the glass, he could not say.

Michael is an enigma. Unexpectedly cheerful under the aura of gloom, he readily accepts help with his projects and offers a constant stream of banal chatter. Apart from in the pool room, on the balcony, haunting a handful of closely-guarded blind spots, he is the perfect Victor. Of all the adults Wilbur regards him as the nearest one to a friend. He approaches him with a question about Rebecca's birthday present and Michael's face splits into a grin like the sun rising.

Vikk is changeable, a lightning storm playing over the sea. There is a modicum of respect between them now, a spark flailing under the weight of damp deference. It is a flimsy and unspoken bond. Single-mindedly sprinting to Rebecca's aid together, hopeless and equal in that hopelessness, sharing the gall to believe that they could help in any way; this has mirrored them in each other. Sometimes Wilbur stands with him on the balcony in taciturn acknowledgment and it is almost companionable.

Rebecca is unpredictable. She likes to boast "privately" that she is _so very separate_ from Minx. Wilbur isn't so sure. When the smoke from one of Tommy's kitchen escapades sends him into a blind hyperventilating fear, she's there to curse him out affectionately until everything calms down. When she laughs, it is true, when she screams, it is true, when she snarls and snaps and startles it is true. As far as he knows she has never told him a lie, and yet. It comes to mind more than once that Minx and Rebecca are simply two sides of the same coin. He grows, guiltily and covertly, to revere them both.

Techno is an unexpected anchor. He has a way of saying diplomatic words like sly pejoratives, a sarcastic ambiguity of tone that makes Wilbur question his otherwise steadfast loyalism. They play videogames and lament puberty and complain about small things, play-acting as Capitol childen and dealing only in the superficial. Best behaviour. By November, Wilbur begins to wonder if the nihilistic rage of their first meeting is ever going to be set free like that again. Selfishly, he hopes it might. Pyro is dispirited, and Josh is intimidating, and Angel is gruff, and Michael is confusing, and Vikk is downright threatening, and he doesn't even _know_ how to describe his friendship with Rebecca. But Technoblade can set the fear of Solstices in him with a look, and he damn well knows it.

Which only leaves Tommy. Tommy is...too painful to be around for long. He reminds Wilbur of a younger Charlie, so fully determined to spin joy where there is none. Everyone has the nightmares, but his are the loudest and the bloodiest. Even Wilbur, who still smells like smoke when he sweats and still sees it all happen again every time he blinks, feels a twisted gratitude that it's not him. Not even two years separate them. And yet, when Wilbur sees Angel dote on him and Pyro crack a private smile at his antics, there's the unshakeable feeling that Tommy has _chosen_ childhood. This regression is an impassable gulf between them.

It's on Rebecca's birthday that everything comes to a head. How laughably appropriate.

In District Four, sunrise was like a switch. The night shift, desirable, became the sweltering discomfort of day on the red-hot ocean. For the Soots, whose parents usually took the day shift with grace, it meant shuffling from their own bedrooms to the dormitories. A revolving catalogue of matrons shepherded them there, and the night shift kids would nod tiredly as they passed in the street. Back then none of them were old enough to even forage properly, and they tottered around the dormitory all day without a care in the world past food and warmth.

(It wasn't poverty, on a good year. Was it? No, for Wilbur that must have been around when JC won. Nobody went hungry that year. Or this year. At least the toddlers will eat well as his friends and family mourn him.)

Already he thinks of such constants in the past tense. This detachment does not escape him.

It's all getting to be too much.

Even though Wilbur is familiar with the feeling of stumbling half-dressed through the dark in the embrace of a groggy crowd, he does not miss it. So when someone bodily hoists him out of his hammock with a finger pressed to their lips, his first instinct is to lash out as hard as he can and run. This does not go well. His second, as Angel fusses over the tear in Josh's pyjamas, is to follow the seven of them to wherever they're going with his mouth clamped firmly shut. 

"We don't have long," says Vikk tiredly, interrupting the stark rhythm of of feet on marble with an impatient clicking sound. "Dawn's on the way." This is incomprehensible to Wilbur, but everyone else just nods.

"I asked 'em to push it back to 10:00," Pyro grunts as they make it to the main corridor. Nobody answers. The double doors to the common room are ajar, the space beyond yawning and pitch black. They keep on past it without a word. "Anyway, setup 'n' crew are gonna be here by 8:00. Heads up for that." Someone groans, and Wilbur almost trips over his own foot, but they're here.

For all its splendour, awash with the dim grey light of Capitol daybreak over the mountains, the balcony still gives him the creeps. Wilbur stands awkwardly behind the others in a shrugged-on jumper and catches a glimpse over Tommy's bedhead of the two figures outside. One of them is instantly recognisable, but the other is...unfamiliar. Clearly a Victor. Her mentor? 

"Wilbur!" Rebecca says with genuine joy, and when she jumps off the railing to drag him over he is relieved to see that her hair and face are still her own. "Bee, this is Wilbur. Wilbur, Bee." This is comfortable territory. Being introduced by a friend at a party, gathering acquaintance like a precious substance. Without thinking, he twists a lock of hair around one finger in polite greeting before remembering that they don't do that here. Vikk blinks at him like he's grown two heads. 

The woman doesn't miss a beat, however, and curls the end of her dark ponytail around her thumb in clunky imitation. Odd; she doesn't look like any of the District 4 Victors he can recall. And....she _can't_ be from District 4.

"Oh, just like JC!" she says delightedly, and her voice is much brighter than it should be at such an early hour. That solves that mystery. "I'm glad I bothered asking him now. Forgive my clumsiness. It's heyimbee, but Bianca will serve."

heyimbee. District 10. He makes a note to research her later and nods with what he hopes is an appropriately respectful frown. Wilbur too has a strange new language to learn, and smiles are no longer the watermark of authenticity; quite the opposite. "He's been asking after you, you know," she adds, beaming so widely herself that it throws him off his game, and her proclamation guts him.

Bianca meets his gaze steadily, unblinking. Does she _know_ how distant JC has been? Does she somehow know too how many times Wilbur has been kept awake by the thought that his spite towards his mentor has been fabricated, encouraged, honed into a weapon?

He does not ask; today is not his. Instead he shrugs and shifts the conversation onto Tommy's shoulders, a surefire diversion that the kid only briefly furrows his brows over. They watch the dawn in silence.

From watching Mi-Rebecca's birthday last year, Wilbur knows vaguely that this is a District 10 tradition. Exactly the significance it holds he isn't sure. When the sun pulls away from the horizon, a reddened eye glaring down, he steals a furtive glance at the two Victors for whom it is so much more than a switch. One is a girl, muscles bunched tensely like a ship's cat readying itself to pounce. One is a woman, every muscle so forcibly relaxed that it has the opposite effect - she looks terrified. Both of them are weeping into the sunlight without movement or sound. He looks away from them with immediate self-disgust and catches the camera set behind the glass door in its whirring movement, straining just short of the corner. Good. Fucking voyeurs.

The injustice of it is electric. It thrums through him, an unnatural spark. Orange light washes over the identical empty balconies above them, prompts murmurs from at least one below. The anger is back and he is scared, like a smoking branch, like a box of matches, like rocks in the water, of himself.

Voices raise themselves from inside, past the camera. They are late, and this is unacceptable. They are reluctant, and this is unforgivable.

His door opens and closes. Not many people do that unannounced. Wilbur takes a gamble without turning from the bathroom mirror.

"Hullo, Austin," he says, and he hopes there's enough venom in it to hurt. 

"I think you need to start shaving." It's said cheerfully, but Wilbur bristles. Literally. 

"I think you need to get out of my room, Austin." 

Maybe it isn't fair to be so angry at him for things so far out of his control. Wilbur doesn't care. It cannot be accidental that his foundation, now yellow-tinted instead of ashen grey, still reeks of a withering campfire. He wheels around to Austin with fire licking at his heels.

"You know," and he looks truly sad to say it, "we're not on camera. You don't gotta...address me." It echoes Rebecca's plea, but with none of the weight behind it. In Wilbur's eyes, to separate the suave persona from this living ghost would do both a disservice.

To this end, he does not draw things out by replying. Stomach churning, he instead directs Austin to the crew in the common room with a tight smile and invites his own prep team inside. The illusion of this choice is satisfying.

When he trots into the common room himself at the head of a cluster of camerawomen, beautifully made up in garish primary colours, something is off. One wall has vanished completely to expose the kitchen in a state of manufactured disarray. The only people inside already are Pyro and Austin, heads bowed in quick and tumbling conversation. There's an urgency behind it that prompts Wilbur to stumble loudly over the threshold, and by the time the crew have righted him they're both sitting on different stools and fiddling with their little computers. Apparently they also work as telephones, but he flat-out refuses to ask for one and find out.

Luckily none of the Capitol folk seem to notice anything wrong. Perhaps it is not in their nature to notice anything at all.

Without makeup, Austin is handsome. With it, he is unattainable, supernatural. Perhaps this would impress Wilbur more if he hadn't lived and breathed it all month.

A reprieve arrives only seconds into his interview - Tommy and Pyro are pretending to brawl again, flitting around the kitchen island with exaggerated bluster. He is reminded again of Pyro's strange grace, and laughs so hard it hurts. Again trickles down the feeling of a pantomime. The clip will be watched millions of times before the week is out. Today, he only knows it as a nervous giggle of pent up horror, expelled.

"So, buddy. Enough about me, how are you feeling?" Wilbur reaches up to pull down his hat, feigning deep contemplation, and steeples his fingers under his chin. Anger has made him sloppy before. He can't afford that now. Rich as rich can be, and yet his new currency is this...this dopey grin, draped over the blade of an immutable cutting cruelty. It will be years before he truly has it down to a science. Today, he tries his hand blind.

They lock eyes across the room. Her hair is a violaceous mess this time, her eyes tired and her makeup dark. Approvingly, she bobs her head. The depth of the gesture reminds him of Rhianna. 

"I'm a little bit grumpy today, actually!" Austin's face falls so subtly that the cameras must only see an encouraging nod. A neat trick, Wilbur supposes. "I'm a grumpy boy. But that makes it better, because it means I can completely destroy Minx." He lets his mouth curve into what is quickly becoming his trademark malicious grin, motioning to the impromptu wrestling match behind them. "That's all I want. I just want Minx to be completely wrecked." Austin laughs again, incredulous, and this one is real enough that Wilbur says it again. "It's all I want, dude!"

In all the hassle of filming, Vikk is the closest Victor, and as they pass each other over the boundary of Austin's domain he gives Wilbur the commiserating cousin of a smile. It's a start.

Taking Vikk's place, he watches from behind the camera as Bianca and Rebecca weave their familiar tapestry. It's the oddly compelling story of Bee and Minx, the long-suffering mother plagued by her errant daughter. Now he knows where he has seen her before. It makes Wilbur fucking sick, and he shudders with unfurling spite when they push him to fuck around in the background of the next shot. Not for the first time, Josh catches his eyes before he snaps. That slow shake of the head grounds him like only fear can.

"Stage fright?" witters a nearby grip, who looks less than threatened when Tommy hisses at her and immediately claps a hand over his mouth. Like Minx's teeth, his tongue really does look forked, and he hasn't said a single word since his snappy one-liner about wrangling snakes.

From then on it's a normal day. Or it masquerades as one, filmed and followed at every turn. Of course he has watched this show before, and been serenely, safely jealous of the Victors' excess. Now he sits ramrod straight next to Minx as they play a simple videogame in-character. If this is what it's like, then he never wants to stream games in his life.

They break for lunch, and Wilbur does his best to pull Bianca away for a moment. She avoids his gaze religiously, and holds onto Minx like she'll otherwise disappear. The message is clear. Not today. But then, when?

By late afternoon everyone is getting antsy. Vikk flashes his glowing cufflinks to a complex rhythm, whilst Angel and Josh sullenly keep up their dichotomy of smirk and sulk. All of them line up to be filmed from three angles, holding bags; Minx is implicitly expected to gush over her presents no matter what they are.

First, a gift from the President himself. It's the most beautiful plaything Wilbur has ever seen. A snarling wolf, rendered in meticulous detail, soft and huge and furred. Tommy's hands itch towards it, but for everyone else - Minx included - there is an affronted second of rage before their expressions settle. It's something to see.

"Bigger than the real fuckin' wolves were," she jokes crassly, breathlessly, and to Wilbur's immense relief does not start crying. The Peacekeepers are appeased, at any rate.

From Pyro she hefts a flask of soup, whilst the camera team snicker unapologetically. Wilbur has tried it - it's the kind of simple-by-necessity District recipe that tastes of warmth and meat and salt and little else. She sips from it, despite the cameras, and a look passes between them as she draws an exorbitant cashmere sleeve across her top lip. He doesn't understand what, but it means _something._ That's District 9 for you, though.

The watch Josh gives her is a simple, functional gesture. It's sleek and digital and there is probably more to it than Wilbur can see. For the camera's benefit, they swear at each other companiably for a good two minutes.

Angel, mask long abandoned, smiles genuinely and presents her with a necklace. The string is simple, but the pendant - a varnished wooden R - has been carved with tiny details that he can't make out. They hug as the director ushers things along, but Michael shakes his head.

"Wilbur and I have collaborated," he shifts his weight back, winks directly into the camera, rubs his hands together. "You'll have to wait."

Minx shoots him a glance and he shrugs, before ogling along with everyone else at Vikk's gift; a brand new pair of glasses.

"They're smart glasses," he explains into the general confusion. "You can do everything on them." And it might just be Wilbur's imagination, but maybe he lingers for a second on that _everything._ Minx slips them on wordlessly and studiously does not look at Michael.

Ever the pragmatist, Techno reaches behind the big sofa to retrieve a box. Inside are a set of bright red boxing gloves.

"Figured you'd want some new ones," he hums, light. To everyone watching, save a few Peacekeepers and President Charles himself, it's an innocuously violent offering. But he's playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse by even acknowledging the conflict. He smiles at the camera with bloodthirsty contentment and Wilbur is as scared as he ever was.

Tommy darts forward, drops something into her hand and refuses to elaborate on what or why. At first someone complains, but the room is distracted as one by trying to pick up the rare sheen of gratitude in Minx's eyes. And then it's Wilbur's turn.

From seemingly nowhere, Michael produces their project. It's a music box, designed and printed with one of Michael's strange machines. The plastic bull inside spins slowly on a dais, and when wound the box plays an old District 4 lullaby in Wilbur's voice. She looks at the animal for a moment, rubs her thumb over its horn and yanks the key around in a jagged circle until the melody spills out. A pale imitation of any such Capitol toy, but he wouldn't dare insult her so.

Minx mouths along to the words for a moment before remembering herself. Another mystery - shared music between Districts? His voice is thin and raspy with desuetude, but she leaps into his arms anyway and knocks both of them - plus an unsuspecting Techno - onto the biggest sofa. Leaping out of the way, Michael takes the cameras' attention for a single second with a scathing joke.

"Thank you," Minx murmurs into his ear before it can swing back, and for a moment he can pretend there are no spectators. That there is no guilt. Maybe he's just playfighting with Rhianna and Matt. Maybe it's Autumn Solstice. Maybe it's him, and her, and him, dancing.

This boorish girl, all angles and edges, cannot be Rhianna. This eerie boy, all sinew and strength, cannot be Matt. But he squeezes his eyes tightly shut and pretends, and then he looks into the camera with one arm slung around each of them and hopes the remaining Soots will understand.

It is many long hours until they are given their offensive semblance of privacy. Filming abandoned, they loll around the common room and fuck up what remains of their costumes with determination. It's distastefully enjoyable to see how the Capitol faces wrench at the sound of taffeta being ripped apart or the wet splash of costly makeup swirling down the drain. It is more horror than they have ever expressed over the Games.

"From now on," Techno mutters finally with the kind of insistent authority that Wilbur can barely tolerate from Pyro, never mind a teenager, "we're doing birthdays the day before." 

His eyes, still red-rimmed under candy-pink contacts reminiscent of Charlie's favourite sweets (a Solstice contrivance, little wafer discs enameled with expensive sugar) land on Michael and Wilbur follows his gaze. The crew had cooed over his upcoming birthday like it was a Solstice in and of itself. Ah, yes, the national holiday of reeeves turning twenty-one in fucking prison. Perhaps Michael has among his many bizarre contraptions a machine to detect treason, because he turns from Techno to Wilbur just to treat him to a miserably knowing smirk. 

But Minx's enthusiasm cannot be dampened. Her and Bianca are practically attached at the hip. He sees it, tangible, the moment the last lot of Capitol people leave and she becomes again Rebecca. 

"I kinda like the hair," she says finally, as if it was a choice. Humming in agreement, Bianca arranges it into two bunches. Childlike. Tenable. It suits her more than it should. "I think I'll keep it purple, eh?"

Tommy doesn't reply even when she jostles him. Whatever they did to his tongue is gone again now, but he still looks ill and more than unwilling to open his mouth.

To Bianca's credit, when they come to take her back to Floor 4 she does not spit or scream. She offers her wrists to the Peacekeepers and Wilbur, already halfway out of his seat, chokes on his next breath. It is not a sign she should know. It is the final obscene insult of a beaten man. One who in the end offers victory to his enemy, before it can be snatched away by force.

But luckily her consignment are simple soldiers from District 2, and they joke in gratified tones that she doesn't need handcuffs anymore. Clearly they don't expect resistance and she offers none. But she does wink at Wilbur as the lift doors close.

It is a good thing, he thinks, that Rebecca has someone like Bianca in her corner. It is a sad thing, he observes with a coil of selfish guilt, that he does not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can we stop reading and writing shipping it's gross and I Would Like Not To See It in the tag thanks

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [on normalcy, friendship, and breakfast (a story from floor 6)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23368015) by [everythingFangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingFangirl/pseuds/everythingFangirl)
  * [punchline (a moment since floor 5)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24022216) by Anonymous 
  * [we are the crossroads (a story from floor 5)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24133513) by [Khio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khio/pseuds/Khio)
  * [the sky shines on the horizon (a moment since floor four)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24267913) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account)




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